PATRIOTIC 

SKETCHES 



OF 



IRELAND 



PATRIOTIC 

SKETCHES 



OF 



IRELAND, 



WRITTEN IN CONNAUGHT. 



JBY MISS OIVEA'SOM 



^, 



TWO VOLUMES IN ONE. 



BALTIMORE: 

PRINTED FOR GEO. DOBBIN 8c MURPHY, AN» 
CALLENDER £c WILLS. 



Gee. Dobbin & Murphy, printer? . 
1809. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



The publishers of Miss Owenson's Pa- 
triotic Sketches would remark, that the 
price of the English copy of this work is 
four dollars, and they flatter themselves 
that it docs not cacecd the present editi- 
on in typographical execution, nor in 
beauty of paper. — The type was cast ex- 
pressly for this volume at the Baltimore 
Foundery owned by Samuel Sower &. 
Co. the paper manufactured by Conrad, 
Lucas & Co. and the relative excellence 
of each have not often been surpassed by 
any publications which have been issu- 
ed from the American press. 

Miss Owenson has been long celebra- 
ted, as an eminent proof of the vast ex- 
tent of the powers of the imagination ; 
and her ardent attachment to the'^ Eme- 
rald Isle," elicits patriotic fire in every 
page of her writings, when the '' green 
fields of Erin" arc the subject. They 
A 2 . 



ADVERTISEMENT, 

who have read and admired the Wild I- 
rish Girl^ will recognise in the Patriotic 
Sketches the same pen, animated by a si- 
milar spirit ; and this last effusion of her 
mind will be perused with the strongest 
emotions of sympathy and philanthropy, 
by all those who weep over the degrad- 
ation, or rejoice in the melioration of the 
condition of man. 

Balt'more, March 22d, 1809. 



PREFACE. 



IN that happy age when the first gloss 
of nature is fresh on every sense, when 
infant attention hangs eagerly on the tale 
of fanciful tradition, when the heart trem- 
bles to the pathetic, and the imagination 
revels in the marvellous ', it was my des- 
tiny to have the first warmed into feeling 
— the other, first kindled into ardour, by 
the pensive legend of national woe, or the 
romantic tale of national heroism. 

To have caught from the paternal lip, 
the transmitted '' song of other times," 
breathed in the native strains of my na- 
tive country, and emulous of the lay 
which engrafted on the simple sensations 
of childhood the glowing sensibilities of 
maturer life, early to have learnt to lisp 
its echo, and to awaken the first tones oi 
my infant lyre to the inspirations of na- 
tional enthusiasm. 



VIII. PREFACE. 

In a more advanced period of existence, 
I became the resident of those scenes sa- 
cred to the airy images of my childhood's 
wonder; from whence tradition still sends 
forth her tale of interest ; and where to 
the heated fancy, the genius of Ireland 
seems to droop over her silenced harp, 
and at intervals to snatch from its tremu- 
lous chords, a strain^ which like the mu- 
sic of her own bards is ^' sweet, though 
mournful to the soul." 

Here reveliing in the ever ready ccad 
milefaUra of milisian cordiality, the fre- 
quent visitant of the peasant's hut, the 
sometimes guest of the chieftain's mansi- 
on, my heart in its general intercourse, 
thus touched on the two extremes of Irish 
wretchedness and Irish comfort. W~hile 
in the genuine aspect of the national cha- 
racter, whether viewed in the rough-hewn 
traits of immodified illiteracy, or the po- 
lished features of educated refinement, my 
mind still found a sanction for that na- 
tional partiality, which if not an intuitive 
principle, at least, formed the first oi its 
imbibed ideas. 



PREFACE. IX. ' 

It was requisite therefore I should leave 
my native country to learn the turpi- 
tude, degradation, ferocity and inconse- 
quence of her offspring ; the miseries of 
her present, and the falsity of the record- 
ed splendours of her ancient state. 

This ungracious information I acquired 
during a short toui' through a sister isle ; 
and it w^as in the course of one of the ma- 
ny converations which occurred on the 
subject of my always termed, " unhappy 
country,'' that a hint casually suggested, 
formed the origin of a little work, which 
-has since appeared under the title of the 
'' Wild Iriiih Girir 

Yet I came to the self-devoted task, 
with a diffidence proportioned to the ar- 
dour which instigated me to the attempt; 
for -as a looman, a young ivoman, and an 
Irtish tcomaii; I felt all the dchcacy of un- 
dertaking a work which had for the pro- 
fessed theme of its discussion, circum- 
stances of national import, and national 
mterest. 

But though 1 meant not to appear on the 
list of opposition as a fairy amazon, arm- 



X. PREFACE. 

ed with a pebble and a sling, against a 
host of gigantic prejudices: although to 
compose a national defence, to ward the 
shaft of opprobrium hurled at the charac- 
ter of my country, to extenuate the ef- 
fects or expose the cause of its popular 
discontents, was as incompatible with 
my sex and years, as with my trivial ta- 
lent, and limited powers ; yet I was still 
aware that in the historic page, recent 
details, and existing circumstances of I- 
rish story, Hved many a record of Ii-ish 
virtue, Irish genius, and Irish heroism, 
which the simplicity of truth alone was 
suflficient to delineate ; many a tale of pa- 
thos which woman's heart could warmest 
feel, and truest tell, and many a trait of 
romantic colouring and chivalrous re- 
finement, which woman's fancy fondest 
contemplates and best depicts. 

Still however in that era of life, when 
the faculties of the mind abandon them- 
selves to the wild impulse of imagina- 
tion, or fondly hover round the local ter- 
ritories of the heart, I found it difficult 
and uninteresting to confine myself to a 



PREFACE. XI. 

mere relation of facts ; and in preference 
to a cold detail of '' flat realities/' deter- 
mined on the composition of a national 
novel, spun from those materials which 
the ancient and modern history, man- 
ners, and habits of my country supplied ; 
and while fiction wove her airy web, to 
draw the brightest tints of her variegat- 
ted tissue from the deathless colouring 
of truth. 

To blend the imaginary though proba 
ble incident with the interesting fact, to 
authenticate the questioned retinement 
of ancient habits, by the testimony of li- 
ving modes, faithfully to delineate what 
I had intimately observed, and to found 
my opinions on that medium which ever 
vibrates between the partial delineation 
of national prejudice, on one side, and 
the exaggerated details of foreign anti- 
pathy on the other; such was the prospec- 
tus my wishes dared to draw, if I failed 
in their accomplishment, that failure a- 
rose from the mediocrity of very limit- 
ed talents, which I soon found were in- 
adequate to realise all my heart dicta- 
ted or my hopes conceived. 



xn. PREFACE. 

The world however had the indulgence 
to tolerate the execution in favour of the 
motive, and the reception with which it 
honoured ^' the Wild Irish Girl/' was 
such as surpassed my most sanguine ex- 
pectations, and stimulated me to further 
exertion in that cause, which is impossi- 
ble to examine without interest, or to 
embrace without enthusiasm. Politics 
can never be a woman's science ; but pa- 
triotism must naturally be a woman's 
sentiment. It is inseparably connected 
with all those ties of tenderness which 
her heart is rnlrnhifprl to cherish, and 
though the energy of the citizen may not 
animate her feelings to acts of nation- 
al heroism, the fondness of the child 
the mistress, the wife and the mother, 
must warm and enoble them into senti- 
ments of national affection. For my- 
self, while my heart still triumphs in the 
principle which leads me to effuse over 
the world's ear the " native wood notes 
wild" of my native country, I would 
wish it to be believed that I have ever 
swept the strings of the Irish harp w^ith 
the tremulous touch of conscious inabi- 



PREFACE. XIII. 

lity; that in humbly endeavouring to 
revive the faded shamrock, that which 
droops round my country's emblem, I 
have ever brought to the grateful effort 
an anxious hope, rather than a sanguine 
expectation of success ; and that in touch- 
ing on the grievances of the lower orders 
of my countrymen and their fatal but con- 
sequent effects, unswayed by interest, 
unbiassed by partiality, the hope of woo- 
ing the attention of abler minds to a sub- 
ject on which my own has dwelt with in- 
effectual anxiety, and unavailing regret, 
has been the sole motive of the feeble 
and individual efforts I now humbly sub- 
mit to the world's consideration. 

SlDNEV OwENSONi 



PATRIOTIC 
SKETCHES^ 



SKETCH L 

THE scenery which environs the town 
of Sligo* is bold, irregular, and pictur- 
esque: and though despoiled of those lux- 
urious woods which once (in common 
with the rest of the island) enriched its 
aspect, it still preserves many of those 
traits which constitute the perfection of 
landscape ; hanging over a beautiful bay 
formed by the influx of the "steep At- 
lantic," sheltered by lofty mountains, and 



* Situated in the county of Sligo, province' 
of Connaught 105 miles from Dublin. It is a 
borough, post, and fair town. 



16 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

reposing almost at the brow of a hill along 
whose base the river Gitley steals its de 
vious way. The high road* by which 
it is approached for the last twenty 
miles, winds through a scene of roman 
tic variety, which frequently combines 
the most cultivated and harmonious 
traits, with the wildest and most abrupt 
images of scenic beauty. The groves, 
the lakes, the enchanted islands, and all 
the glowing charms of aii Italian scenery 
which diffuses itself over the picturesque 
and cultivated scenes of Florence-courtf 
are suddenly replaced by a dreary heath, 
and a bold and continued mass of rocks, 
through which nature, time, and art, 
seem to have cut a deep and narrow de- 
file which, entered at that hour sacred to 
the sombre grandeur of the true sublime, 
awakens in the heart of the traveller such 
a warning as the entrance to Dante's In- 
ferno holds out. I left Dublin in the au- 
tumn of 1806, with the intention of ram- 
bling through such scenes in the north 



* The northern road. 

t The seat of the earl of Iniskillcn. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 17 

west of Connaught as I had not yet visi- 
ted; and it was here my little journey be- 
gan to receive its first decided character 
of interest; it w^as here that the impres- 
sion made on my imagination insensibly 
communicated to memory the first of 
those rough sketches which, divested of 
the delicate pencil, touch the pentimenti 
(to use a technical phrase) of studied art, 
and practised judgement. I have copied 
with the same rude simplicity with which 
they were drawn in the moment of pas- 
sing observation, as the heart was touch- 
ed by objects of moral interest, or the fan- 
cy awakened by scenes of natural beauty. 
1 had watched the last beam of the set- 
ting sun stealing his faded splendours 
from the last of those lakes which pre- 
cede the entrance of the cavern -path, 
and the broken and irregular masses of 
rock which arose pyramidically on ei- 
ther side, partially caught the retreating 
glow of the horizon, and displayed the 
greatest variety of light and shadow, till 
gradually opening, a rich and expansive 
prospect broke on the eye : the lakes and 

B 5^ 



18 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 

fairy land of Hazlewood*, the bold at^ 
titude of Benbubin, the beetling brow of 
Knockna-bet? the ocetin's gleaming line 
€omminghng with the horizon, and the 
town of Sligo spreading irregularly a- 
longthe base of a lofty hill, crowned with 
meadows, and successively betrayed by 
the expanding view ; till the softening 
influence of twilight mellowed every 
outline into air, and dissolved every ob- 
ject into one mild and indistinct hue. 

The literal meaning of the word Sli 
go is the ** town of shells'^ and the deri- 
vation of the epithet is traced by local 
history and oral tradition to the follow- 
ing curious origin. Many of the inhabit- 
ants of Esdera (now Bally sidore), a flou- 
rishing and neighbouring town, having 
jbeen driven by the vicissitudes of civil 
dissention from their native place, fled 
to the shore, and of the shells and peb- 
bles flung by the violence of the tide a- 
Ions the coast, erected a number of huts. 



* The scat of Owen Wynn, Esq, 
t In Engfish, " the hill of the king. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 19 

which formed the infancy of Sligo. Sli- 
go is now a large opulent and commer- 
cial town, while its parent city is one of 
the most ruinous and wretched villages 
in the province: still distinguished for the 
beauty of its situation and the romantic 
wildness of its environs. The vicissi- 
tudes of those two little places present 
us an epitome of the fate of all earthly 
states. The routine of all human, as of 
all natural events, knows no variability 
in its cause or its effects ; and the rise, 
elimatric, decline, and fall of every em- 
pire, are but the counterpart of that 
which has preceded it. Babylon (says a 
celebrated French philosopher), " qui n'a 
plus que des monceauxdeterre fouillee,a 
occupe sur la rive orientale un espace de 
six lieuesde \oug\xe,ur,Q,tT]iehcsaux cent 
falais est aujured'hui reduite a la condi- 
tion d'un miserable village." — '' Babylon 
the sight of which is now distinguished 
only by the inequalities of the ground, 
formerly occupied six leagues in length ; 
and Thebes with its hundred gates (or 
palaces) is reduced to the condition of a 
wretched village." — Thus by the unvari- 



20 PaTEIOTIC 8KETC&ES. 



ed mnd ^jencral laws of naiorp a Kne €>f 

c&rts of afl Iwiaaii cxioiioo, and Ihiiits 
Ikr f e g! C S S of all haman greamef f — 
and Aose traasiiioBs of power from ibe 
iB%kty to tkc lesser, wlacb parti^^y and 
SMfiridB^^j considered, seem stan^d 
witk dK character <if instalRthj, are in 
fikct die great and irrefiragi^bie proofs of 
the seneral kmBony aad order of tlie 



pjkTKionc Mjjumu 21 



SKETCH n. 



THE re trutiw ice of 2 scene, z sentt- 
st^cs «f existence, •^es bxch^ of die 




&tf&^« k perhaps I&$s 
farcMe (aad cotaoirj less gjracMRK) 
wkh wfarek icts e«B- 

J le&d> it a saperaded c&vnu as^ 
faan^ witk a tcB^ar resr^ i^pcB its 



'e-' 



22 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

distant view of Sligo abbey, in a mo- 
ment of such felicity as childhood only 
experiences/^ when we feel that we are 
happier than we know." An idea of its 
venerable ruins had insensibly associa- 
ted itself with the remembrance of the 
lively susceptibility 1 then possessed^ to 
every impression ; and that idea still pre- 
serving its ascendancy in my mind, ren- 
dered the object that gave rise to it, an 
object of peculiar interest, and ardent 
curiosity. 

I have always loved those scenes 
which connect the pleasures of intellect 
with those of sense, which are equally 
dear to reflection and to fancy, over 
which the mental sympathies extend 
themselves, and where the heart and the 
eye repose with equal satisfaction and 
delight; and as I involved myself amidst 
the ruins of Sligp abbey where doubtless;, 

" Many a saint and many a hero trod,** 

the beautiful apos trophy of Volney float- 
ed on my memory : 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 2S 

^^ Je vous salue mines solitaires ! Oui : 
tandis que votre aspect repousse d'un se- 
cret efFroi les regards du vulgaire, mon 
coeur trouve a vous contempler le charme 
des sentimens profounds et des haute s 
pensees/' — '^ Hail, solitary ruins ! Yes : 
while your appearance cxites in vulgar 
minds a repulsive dread, my heart tastes, 
in contemplating you, the charm of pro- 
found sentiments and elevated thoughts.'' 

The abbey seemed to have moulder- 
ed into new beauty, since the cursory 
view 1 last had of it. Recent decay had 
touched its cloisters with a painter's hand 
— and the influence of a few added years, 
and the vicissitudes of a few successive 
seasons, had mellowed its once grey 
tints into a variety of glowing hues, and 
had enriched its vegetative drapery with 
more luxuriant masses of foliage. 

The abbey, whose former extent and 
beauty may be calculated from the 
wreck which time has spared, owes its 
foundation to Maurice Fitzgerald; who, 
under the invocation of the Holy Ghost, 



24) PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

erected it for the friars of the order of St. 
Dominic. Like other religious edifices, 
it found its sanctity no protection against 
the ravages of war, and the vicissitudes 
of civil dissension ; and falling a prey to 
the contending factions of the province, 
it was pillaged successively in the years 
1270, 1360, and 1394 : so that in 1414, its 
revenues were scarcely adequate to the 
support of twenty friars ; while all that 
the rapine and violence of war had spa- 
red, was finally destroyed by an acci- 
dental fire. The abbey, however, must 
have been an object of no trivial consi- 
deration to the Romish see ; for pope 
John XXIII. issued apostolic letters to pro- 
mote its restoration, andelicited the hum- 
ble mite of the poor, and the splendid 
contribution of the rich sinner, throuoh 
the medium of their salvation, by offer- 
ing the remission of ten j'ears and forty 
days penance to all who, on the feasts of 
the Assumption and St. Patrick, should 
visit the ruined abbey, and contribute to 
its repairs. Foremost on the list of its 
benefactors, stood O'Connor, lord or 
chief of Sligo, the lineal decendant of the 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 25 



ancient kings of Connaught, and whose 
posterity still boast that the blood-royal 
of Ireland flows in their veins. \\ hat- 
cver remuneration the pious Hberality of 
the chiefiain may have received in the 
other world, it has at least obtained a 
deathless testimony in this ; for a sta 
tue erected to his memory still holds its 
place unimpaired amidst the surrounding 
ruins. Its coarse sculpture is strongly 
illustrative of those rude days, when the 
progress of genius and reason was oppo- 
sed by political discord, and religious 
intolerance ; when the infant arts droop 
ed, neglected or oppressed; and when the 
human mind, directing all its powers to 
the difficult and doubtful preservation of 
a harassed existence, checked the opera 
tion of its better faculties, and resigned 
all its nobler perceptions to the influence 
of credulity and error. 



To accuse heaven of venality, and con 
sider religion as a traffic, may be peculiar 
todays of ignorance and darkness ; but 
in what age has religion been painted o- 
c 



26 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

Iherwise than selfish? Punishments and 
rewards have been the invariable agents 
of faith, and an eternity of enjoyment 
or of suffering has been still held out to 
seduce or to impel us to that which na- 
ture teaches and reason confirms. 

The ruins of Sligo abbey, though wild 
ty irregular, are noble in decay. The 
arched entrance to the chapel, lofty and 
animpaired, is still enriched with the fo- 
liage, and that delicacy of ornament 
which forms so striking a conrast amidst 
the sombre heaviness of Gothic architec- 
ture. A stone gallery still surrounds the 
nave of the chapel. The delicate propor- 
tions and construction of the eastern 
window, still in good preservation, are 
ornamented with Gothic arches and cu- 
rious tracery ; the tower, elevated and 
conspicuous, has sustained no injury ex- 
cept in a partial dilapidation of its bat- 
tlements ; and three sides of the cloisters 
that once formed a large square, are still 
supported by a range of small fluted pil- 
lars enriched with a variety of devices 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 27 

of the most minute workmanship, and 
crowned with an arched roof. These in- 
teresting ruins spread along an inclined 
plane, bathed by the river Gitley, which 
guides the eye, in its meandering course, 
to the delicious scenery of Hazlewood, 
and loses itself amidst those charming 
lakes which reflect on their expansive bo- 
somsthe most romantic shores and bold- 
est mountains ; while on the other side of 
the river swells arange of pasturage hills, 
a distant view of the ocean is partially 
caught, and a chain of lofty mountains 
forms the bas-relief to the animated pic- 
ture. 

Abstracted devotion or monkish lux- 
ury could never have found a site more a- 
propriate to holy meditation, and mdre 
conducive to laic enjoyment ; and the 
vale of Euzras, which sheltered in its bo- 
som the celebrated abbey of Llanthoni, 
boasts less of natural charm, in the ani- 
mated description of Giraldus Cambren- 
sis, than the scenery which once sur- 
rounded the Abbey of Sligo must have 



28 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

possessed, when the luxuriance of un- 
liewn woods spread their shade over its 
romantic hills, and the intrusion of an 
ill-built town, neither obscured nor de 
formed its extensive and varying pros- 
pect. 



Disposed by a certain tone of mind to 
behold with a touching interest, a scene 
never to be viewed with indifference, 
while a pre-existing train of ideas were 
refreshed and associated by the corres 
ponding impressions which my senses 
received from every object around me. 
[ sat down on the tomb of the royal 
O'Connor, and plucked the weed or blew 
away the thistle " that waved there its 
lonely head." The sun was setting in 
gloomy splendour, and the lofty angles 
of the Abbey-tower alone caught the re- 
flection of his dying beams, from the 
summits of the mountains where they 
still lingered : the horizon betrayed a 
beautiful gradation of tint, which in sen 
sibly softened into the reserved colour 
ing of twilight, while broken hues, and 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 29 

irregular masses of light and shadow^ 
flung through the pillars of the cloisters^ 
or from the high- arched portals of the 
chapel, harmonized the general outline 
of the ruins, and shed around such aerial 
and indistinct forms, as fancy woos to 
aid the vision of her wildest dream. Nor 
did she now refuse to " give to airy no- 
thing a local habitation and a name." — 
Along each mouldering aisle, and gloo- 
my cloister, her creative eye still pursu 
ed the close-cowled monk ; the haughty 
abbot, pacing in all the solemn pomp of 
holy meditation the damp and checquer 
ed pavement ; or caught the pious chief 
tain's warrior-form, as he made his sump 
tuous offering at the altar's foot, follow 
ed by the credulous and penitential crowd 
4vhich the artful policy of John had lur- 
ed thither, to expiate the past, and pur- 
chase the remission of future sins. 

While the singular and striking ceremo- 
nies of a religion, so consonant to the live- 
liest powers of the imagination, once 
splendidly celebrated in the now gloomy 
and ruinous chapel; the brilliant illuiuina- 
c 2 



so PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

tions of tapers, the solemn gray-headed 
friars, or close-veiled nuns ; the meretri 
cious ornaments which the vitiated taste 
of superstition flings over the pure and 
simple forms of true religion, and the 
swelling chaunt of midnight devotion or 
matins-piety, seemed even now, some 
thing more than *^ the baseless fabric of 



Such scenes are never to be visited 
Avith that interest which peculiarly be- 
longs to them, in the broad glare of day^s 
meridian splendour, since much of their 
picturesque effect is produced by the so- 
lemn stillness of the twilight hour, when 
the faintest breeze wastes not its sigh 
upon the *' desert air ;" and when the 
dim discoloured liglit sheds a mystic hue^ 
on every object, and peoples the gloomy 
space with wild and fancied forms. The 
simplicity of reason, and the purity of 
truth, though they afford the clearest c 
vidence to the mind, and sublime while 
they enlighten, deny to fancy that image 
so dear to her illusory desires ; the sim 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 31 

pie conviction of an abstract faith gives 
no picturesque forms to her wondering 
gaze, affords no mysteries to her unli- 
censed wishes. A sensible personified 
religion is the creed she clings to, where 
the senses are the medium of belief, and 
credulity reposes on the enjoyments of 
imagination. Thus the faith of a So- 
crates was the faith of a philosopher, but 
the mythology of Homer was the religi- 
on of a poet. 

While my eye now rested on those ob- 
jects that formed a festival to my fancy, 
which revelled in a train of visionary i- 
deas full of poetical interest, my mind 
insensibly recurred to those events and 
circumstances in the religious and poli- 
tical history of my country, from whence 
these objects stole their interest ; and 
tracing the sacred footsteps of Christia- 
nity, from the moment of its admission 
into Ireland, to the period of its existing 
influence, 1 sighed to reflect that those 
mild tenets by which it preached '^ peace 
and good will to all men,'^ were still op- 



32 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

posed by the cold contracted dogmas of 
intolerance, flinging its gloomy shadow 
on religion's cheering rays, like the nox- 
ious vapour, which rising from the cor- 
ruption of the earth, meets and obscures 
the beam whose radiance comes from 
Heaven. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 33 



SKETCH IIL 



POLITICAL philosophy by extend 
ing the mind's eye to the whole great 
scale of civil society, and demonstrat- 
ing the close-linked dependencies of its 
remotest parts, affords to the benevo- 
lence of the human heart, and the com- 
prehension of the human understanding, 
a social system, gratifying to the feelings 
of the one, and ennobling to the facul- 
ties of the other. 

But that partial view of things which 
prejudice loves to sketch, and which self- 
interest delights to contemplate, sheds 
over the political sentiments of certain 
minds, a species of misty influence thro' 
which every object is beheld dim and 
discoloured. 



34 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

How few are those who dare to take in- 
to the scope of their political specalation 
the universal good and welfare of their 
countrj', independent of every bias to any 
sect or an\- party I How fesv are they 
who dare to expand their thoughts, and a- 
waken their feelings, to the general well- 
being of their compatriots, and hazard- 
ing their individual effort to it? promoti- 
on, contemn that chain by which inte- 
rest* would rivet them to some empow- 
ered being on whose influence their own 
must depend; while every principle of 
political philanthropy is lost in a timid 
coincidence with the sentiments and o- 
pinions of him, who, himself the slave of 
circumstances, makes the sacrifice of in- 



* Ce n'est done point (dit Helveiius) de la 
mechancete des honnnes dont il faut se plain- 

dre, mais de rignorance des legislateurs, qui 
ont toujours mis VinltTii particulier en op/iod' 

tion avec Cintertt ,^hitral. " It is not of the 

•wickedness of mankind," says Helvetius, •' that 
■we ought to complain ; but of the ignorance 
of legislators, who have always set private at 
variance with public interests." 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 35 

dependence in one sense, the purchase of 
it in another. To one who, reared in re- 
tirement, has studied the world but in 
books ; who enters its busy scene full of 
^^ the vulgar errors of the wise ;" whose 
romantic mind has taken the bias of its 
political sentiments from the national 
enthusiasm of the first Greeks, or the a- 
mo7^ patrice of the first Romans ; and w ho 
unites to these imbibed ideas, an almost 
innate devotion to the land of his nativi 
ty ; that species of conduct in politics 
which is founded on self-interest, ani- 
mated by faction, or imbittered by into- 
lerance, must excite in the mind of the 
young, the indigent patriot, the strong- 
est feehng of contempt and abhorrence. 

There is in Ireland, and perhaps there 
is every where, a kind of non-descript 
characters in politics, tantamount to that 
which Burke alludes to when he speaks 
of a certain party who distinguished 
them selves by the name of ^^ king's men," 
" by an invidious exclusion, he adds, of 
the rest of his majesty's most loyal and 



36 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

affectionate subjects." The true ratic 
onal, disinterested loyalist, is the most 
respectable of political characters ; he is 
a patriot in the best sense of the word; 
his country only is dearer to him than 
his king: and while he boldly stands forth 
as the defender of one against the abuse 
of power, or encroachmentof royal pre- 
rogative, andas the champion of the other 
against the rage of popular inebriety or 
anarcliical tumult, his property and his 
life are cheerfully risked, and nobly de- 
voted, to the preservation of the respec 
tive rights and safeties of both. 

But in Ireland, among the many who 
are dignified with the name of loyahst, 
there are some who, mistaking the prin- 
ciple, injure the cause they affect to sup- 
port ; who in debasing their own coun- 
try, injure that empire of which it is a 
constituent part ; and who, false to the 
land which gave them birth, cannot be 
true to that sovereign to whose heart 
and interest that country is, or ought to 
be, endeared. '^ If Ireland be not safe. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 37 

we, the English, cannot be safe,"* says 
sir Edward Coke, when agreeing with 
his friend sir John Davie s on the pohti- 
cal independence of Ireland. f It was 
thus a crown-officer of England wisely 
thought, and boldly spoke: it has how- 
ever been since reserved for certain or- 
ders of Irishmen to discover, that to fo- 



* The language of that sound and perfect 
policy which has its basis in truth and philan- 
thropy, has been ever the same in all ages and 
in all countries ; and Lord Howick, in his elo- 
quent speech upon a late momentous question, 
delivers an opinion to the same effect, and al- 
most in the same words as these used by sir 
E. Coke : " If Ireland were rendered insecure, 
the establishment of England would be expos- 
ed to greater danger than any which could pos- 
sibly result from such a boon to the Catholics," 
&c. 

t It is a circumstance not a little to the ho- 
nour of Ireland, that scarce any man ever en- 
joyed the office of her government, who did 
not prove for ever after her strenuous defen- 
der, . • 

D 



38 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

ment by artful or coercive measures the 
disturbances in Ireland, to perpetuate e- 
very party-feud, retrace every fading cha- 
racter of religious distinction, give the 
colouring of rebellion to every local com- 
plaint or domestic commotion, of which 
their own conduct to the lower orders is 
generally the efficient cause, and to brand 
the character of their country with the 
epithets of wretched, deluded and un- 
happy, is to conduce to the honour of En- 
gland, and to demonstrate their own at- 
tachment to the Britiiih government ! 

How happy is England to find in the 
•noblest of her sons, the most devoted of 
her champions ! Enthusiastic even to pre- 
judice in her favor; 

" Their first best country ever is at home ;'* 

while Ireland fondly sighs to produce, in 
all a mother's pride, those of her proge- 
ny, who, uniting the influence of high 
rank to the powers of opulence, the pure 
spirit of patriotism to the steady senti- 
ment of loyalty, am! the ardent love of 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 39 

freedom to that of rational subordinati- 
on, might stand forth at once her pride^ 
protection and defence. Yet what coun- 
try ever flourished in which the honour 
of national pride was extinct r* what 
country ever obtained esteem from other 
nations, when^it was denied to her by her 
own sons ? It is true that the great mass 
of the people of [r el and are attached to 
their country with an idolatrous, butin- 
cifectual fondness, that increases in a ra- 
tio with her struggles and her sufferings : 
but the union of power and influence rests 
not alw ays with those who w ould exert 
both to the promotion of their country's 
good; and while the domesticated ene- 
mies of Ireland, even from the midst of 
the luxurious asylum which she affords 
them, blast forth the tale of her degradati- 



* " Le bonheur des peuples depend et de la 
felicite dont ils jouissent au-dedans, et du res- 
pect qu'ils inspirent au-dehors." — " The wel- 
fare of a nation depends on the happiness which 
it enjoys within itself, and the respect with 
which it inspires others.''-'^ ffelvetius. 



40 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 

on with Stentorian lungs, the attachment 
of her numerous and unalienated chil- 
dren is breathed in tender murmurs or 
indignant sighs ; and like the tones of 
her own harp, vibrates in sad and plain- 
tive fondness unheard or unheeded. It 
is finely observed by Voltaire, that " Le 
genre humain seroit trop malheureux s'il 
6toit aussi pret de commettre des choses 
atroces, que de les croire ;"* and were 
the national character of the Irish as cor 
rupt as the tongue of prejudice asserts ; 
it must have long since drawn down up- 
on its own iniquities that retribution, 
w^hich an apostacy from the moral influ- 
ence of nature and reason inevitably in- 
curs in a general and national, as well 
as in an individual and personal sense. 
To speak indeed of the vices of any 
country independent of its police or le- 
gislation, is perhaps to speak in vulgar 
language, and under the influence of vul- 
gar prejudice. 



* " The condition of mankind would be 
wretched indeed, if they were as prone to 
commit atrocities as to believe tales of them." 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 41 

One of the greatest philosophers of the 
last age, considers the series of illustri- 
ous actions ascribed to the Greeks and 
Romans of a certain period, as the result 
of that address by which their legislators 
blinded the individual with the public 
interest, '' in a union of which, he adds, 
consists the true spirit of laws." In 
spite, however, of the obstacles which 
have oifered themselves to the progress 
of the national virtues and national prosr 
perity of Ireland, she can yet " lift her 
fair head on high," while she beholds so 
many of her sons weaving the laurel 
round their victor-brows in those distant 
lands where the hand of cold intolerance 
cannot tear it from the hero's grasp : and 
while on her own green shores, native 
genius and native talent blush not to call 
her mother, and boast their inspiration is 
their country's love. 
d2 



42 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 



SKETCH IV. 



ABOUT three miles from the town of 
Sligo, Hes a beautiful spot, called the glen 
of Knock-na-ree, from the bold and ro- 
mantic mountains, along whose base it 
winds the road which leads to it from the 
town; it combines many charms of ocean 
scenery, with many traits of picturesque 
landscape. The little maritime village 
of Gibraltar, whose white huts appear 
glittering among the rocks that skirt the 
irregular coast; the cloud-capped heights 
of Benbullen and Knock -na-ree, with a 
distant view of the island of Innismurry,*^ 

* The island of Innismurry is celebrated m 
Irish legend, and is still remarkable for the 
'manners, dress, and customs of its inhabitants. 
The ruins of the chapel of St. Columbkiil, and 
part of the crosier of vSt- Molaire, are sjtill 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 43 

!ind a faint undulating line of the coast 
of Ulster; unite within the scope of a 
coup-d'oeil, a picture highly animated 
and romantic. The direct path to the 
glen is tracked through an expansive 
meadow, which slopes from the foot of 
Knok-na-ree towards the bay, and ter- 
minating in a certain point, by a narrow 
defile, forms the entrance of the glen, 
which winds between a double range of 
rocks for more than a mile. This ro- 
mantic glen, rich in all that irregularity 



shewn there as relics of the two most famous 
saints in the calender of Irish canonization ; — 
the latter, who was confessor to Columbkill, ba- 
nished him from Innismurry, his favorite re- 
treat, to Scotland, as a penance for three des- 
perate battles the ambition of his penitent had 
caused to be fought. The Irish seem to have 
held all islands in a superstitious veneration. 
In the river Shannon, the romiuitic island of 
Iniscailtre contains the ruins of seven church- 
es and a round tower ; and in another of its is- 
lands, an anchorate tower 120 feet high, with 
the ruins of eleven churches, are, I am told, 
still visible. 



44 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

SO essential to the true picturesque, seems 
to have been produced by some convul- 
sion of nature ; and the rocks in many 
places are so perfectly concave and con- 
vex, that it appears as if another shock 
w^ould unite them again into one solid 
mass. 

The strained eye becomes dazzled in 
the contemplation of their altitude, while 
it reposes with delight on the beautiful 
variety of vivid hues which stain their 
shelving sides ; on the rich foliage of the 
shrubs that hang their fantastic drapery 
over the rugged projections ; or on the 
bending trees which seem to shoot from 
their deep crevices without the aid of 
earth to nourish their bare and interwo- 
ven roots : while innumerable torrents, 
dashing from the pointed summits of the 
highest cliffs, dow at their base in one 
pellucid stream ; or rushing with con- 
gregated force over roots of trees, or pro- 
jecting rocks, fall into some deep cavity, 
and form an elevated and natural bason, 
shaded by the luxuriancy of the over 
banging shrubs. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 45 

The glen is sometimes overflown by 
these torrents, while the immense mas- 
ses of rock, covered with moss and li- 
chens, which they force down at inter- 
vals in their steep descent, construct, for 
the steps of the adventurous wanderer, 
a species of little causey ; and the over- 
arching" of the cliffs seems to threaten 
destruction from above ; or, by a con- 
junction of their respective shrubs, forms 
a leafy canopy almost impervious to the 
beams of the sun. That even some de- 
gree of moral charm should not be want- 
ing to this little Vaucluse, the rocks in ma- 
ny places assume the appearance of spa- 
cious ruins, sometimes rising in light and 
spiral shafts, sometimes rudely broken 
in irregular masses ; while fancied clois- 
ters, imaginary fortresses, and ideal cas- 
tles, present themselves to the eye amidst 
the creeping underwood and clustering 
shrubs, by which their grotesque forms 
are partially veiled. Where the gloom 
seems deepest, and the opposite rocks 
almost knit their towering summits, the 
glen abruptly terminates, and a beauti- 



46 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

ful sea-coast suddenly bursts upon the 
view; the bay reflecting on its bosom 
the opposite shores, spangled with white 
houses; the mountains of Donegal float- 
ing like vapours in the haze of distance ; 
and as a back-ground to the animated 
landscape, the mountain of Knock -na- 
ree, rising majestically from behind the 
rocky sides of the glen which reposes at 
its base. 

Sugna-clogh, or the Giant's Grave, 
near the town of Sligo, excites a diiYer- 
ferent interest from that awakened by 
the glen of Knock -na-ree. Several im- 
mense stones are raised in a very curi- 
ous and romantic manner, upon the ends 
of others, which seem pitched perpendi- 
cularly into the earth, and give to the 
eye a miniature representation of Stone- 
lienge on Sahsbury -plain. 

Sugna-clogh is one of those puzzling 
relics of other times, with which anti- 
quarian ingenuity delights to amuse it^ 
self; but to the mind that seeks a pictu- 



PATRIOTfC SKETCHES. 47 

resque effect, or moral interest, in eve- 
ry object, it merely excites a transient 
cm'iosity which the traditional lore of 
the country is unable to gratify. 



48 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 



SKETCH V, 



IT is observed by Zimmerman, that 
^' in the mivaried stilhiess and stagnation 
of small remote places, lie buried an acri- 
mony and rancour of the passions, rarely 
found in i^reat cities." That mind in- 
deed must be endued with great native 
strength, over which a certain peculiarity 
of situation holds no influence; which 
can breathe the spirit of liberty beneath 
the lash of despotism, be true to nature 
where art only reigns, and in a range of 
action limited within a narrow circle, 
disdain to graduate its sentiments and 
opinions on a scale proportionably con- 
tracted. 

From the general order of things, the 
lesser towns of every country must still 



1*ATJU0T1C 8KElX:i{ES. 49 

be as centres, to wliich the radii of illi- 
bcrality and cabal point with the greatest 
force ; and Ireland perhaps, beyond any 
other country in Europe, furnishes the 
strongest testimony to the truth of the 
assertion. That destructive spirit of in- 
tolerance in religion, and of faction in 
politics, which has so long and fatally dif- 
fused its noxious intluence over the wholt! 
kingdom and which we hope is now hap 
[n\}' fading away in its leading cities, 
may still be found flourishing in all its 
pristine vigour, in the hearts of those lit 
tie towns and great villages, where both 
are still mirtured by the local intimacy 
and opinionative distance of those who 
perhaps agree in fundamentals, and dif 
iVr only in points merely speculative ; 
where, on one side, opposition is fed by 
the jealousy of conscious degradation, 
and on the other, by the pride of consci 
ous prerogative : where each, solely bent 
on the support of its respective tenets, 
allows no modification in political prin- 
ciple or religious opinion ; where all 
must be considered as the extreme of 



50 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

orthodox zeal or heterodox error, as the 
coarse caricature of loyalty or wild out- 
line of rebellion ; and where the respec- 
tive prejudices of each party, tear away 
in their vortex every unbiassed sentiment 
of public good, every generous principle 
of patriotic feeling, and sacrifice at the 
shrine of religious and political intole- 
rance, the peace, the welfare, and the 
prosperity, of a nation.* 

To minds which slavery has not bro- 
ken, nor oppression debased, the consci- 
ousness of political inferiority and nati- 
onal inconsequence must ever bring with 
it a sensitive pride, a tenacious reserve, 
a suspicious timidity, and an irritability 
of spirit, which are only to be dissipated 
by the conciliating advances of that su- 
perior influence under which a series of 
certain events has placed them : and 



* " The two factions of protestant and ca- 
tholic, more intent on thwarting each other, 
than in maintaining their mutual rights, be- 
came an easy prey," &c. Macanlay's History 
of England,, vol. ii. p. 177. 



IMTPJOl'lC SKETCHES. 51 

vvlieii two distinct parties are internally 
divided by a difference in religious faith, 
i y an inequality of politicai establish- 
ment, and externally coalesced by local 
circumstaiices and certain ties of deni- 
zation common to both ; where preroga 
live rests on one side, and submission on 
the other ; the natural suspicions, the 
cautious vigilant diftidcncc of the subor- 
dinate party, are only to be seduced into 
amity, or warmed into confidence, by the 
open, injjenuous, volunteering liberality 
f the supreme power.* 



* " Sure I am says Edmund Burke, that 
there have been thousands in Ireland who have 
never conversed with a Roman catholic in their 
whole lives, unless they happened to talk with 
their gardener's workman, or to ask their way 
when they had lost it in their sports, or at best 
who had only associated with ex-footmen or 
other domestics of the third or fourth order ; 
and so averse were they some time ago to have 
them near their persons, that they would not 
employ even those who would never find their 
way beyond their stable. I well remember a 
great, and in many respects a good man, who 



52 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

But in that dominant sect which by 
adopting a rational scepticism to anti- 
quated error, may be natm-ally supposed 
to possess the tolerance towards others 
which it has claimed for itself, dwells 
there that mild, that generous, and all- 

advertised for a blacksmith, but at the same 
time added, ' he must be a protestant.' It is 
impossible that s'.ich a state of things, though 
natural goodness in many persons will undoubt- 
edly make exceptions, must not produce alien- 
ation on the one side, and pride and insolence 
on the other." 

It is to be hoped, and indeed to be believed, 
lliat the fatal spirn of prejudice thus strongly 
adverted to by Burke, is daily losing its influ- 
ence; for myself though one among the many 
in my own country who have been educated 
in the most rigid adherence to the tenets of 
the church of England, I should, like the poor 
Maritornes of Cervantes, think myself endov»ed 
with very few " sketches and shadows of Chris- 
tianity,*' v/ere I to confine virtue to sect ; or 
make the speculative theory of opinion the test 
of moral excellence, or proof of human per- 
fection. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 5S 



conciliating spirit of charity, which, like 
the bow of heaven's promise, flings the 
encircling arch of its mercy round the 
whole earth, and receives within the 
great compass of its indulgence every 
sect and every persuasion ? Dwells there 
among those who vaunt their own abhor- 
rence of fanaticism and bigotry, that 
pure and sole religion which, in consi- 
dering'the great and only Object of the 
universal worship of mankind, neither 
derides nor reviles the medium through 
which it flows ? Does it indiscriminately 
betray that open smiling confidence 
which unnerves the hand of vengeance, 
inspires alfection, and turns the gall of 
hatred to the '' milk of human kind- 
ness ?" Does it feel for the political sub- 
jection of a compatriot, but not esta- 
blished sect; endeavour to counteract 
the cftects of an erroneous and fatal po- 
licy, by opposing the endeared rites of 
social conciliation to the chilling influ- 
ence of a penal code ; of private inter- 
course to public distinction ; and by 
endeavouring to produce that compatriot 

£2 



54 PATRIOTIC SKETCIiliS. 

felicity, that national unanimity and bro- 
therly love, over which a i'anetical dog- 
ma, or an intolerant law, holds no juris- 
diction ? If these interrogations can be 
answered by an undeniable affirmative 
of actual demonstration, what has Ii-e- 
land to fear ? what has Ireland to wish ? 
The unanimity of a nation, and the mu 
tual confidence and confederation of 
her sons, are the firmest basis of her 
prosperity, and the strongest bulwark of 
her freedom. 

The odium of bigotry is generally 
thrown upon the subordinate sect of 
every country. Bigotiy, however, is in 
fact the cosmopolite of religion, and ad- 
hf^res with more or less influence to every 
mode of faith. Of the countless sects 
into which the christian church is divid- 
ed,* it appears that each, ^^ dark wiih 



* " Les Chretiens, says Helvetius, qui don- 
naient avec justice le nom de barbaric et de 
crime anx cruautes qu' exercaient sur eux les 
payens, ne donnerent-ils pas le nom de zele 
aux cruautes qu'ils exercaient a leur tour sur 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. i?0 

excessive light," arrogates to itrJclf an in- 
fallible spirit, which shat^ the gates of 
mercy on the rest of mankin^i, while it 
condemns or opposes to the utmost 
stretch* of its ability, all who^^^e faitli i.^ 



ces memes payens ?" — ." Did not the Chris- 
tians, who justly gave the epithets o^ barbaritij 
and crime to the cruelties inflicted on tlicm by 
the pagans, dignify with the name of zeal 
those cruelties v/hich they retaliu^ed in theii 
turn ?" 

* " Ja consideniis cette divcrsitc dcs scctes. 
qui regnent sur la terre, et s*uccusent mutuel- 
lement de mensonge et d'erreur ; je deman- 
dais, quelle est la bonne ? chacune me repon- 
dait, ' c^est la micnne ;' chacune me disait, 

* nioi seiiie, et nnes partisans pensent juste ; 
tous les autres sont dans I'eiTeur.' Et com- 
ment savezvous que votre secte est la bonne ? 

* Parceque Dieu I'a dit. * Et qui vous dit que 
Dieu Ta dit ? ' Mon pasteur, qui le sait bien ; 
mon pasteur me dit, et ainsi croire, et aiiisi jc 
crois-,' — il m'assure que tous ceux qui disent 
autrement que lui mententy et je nc les ecoute 
pas."' — E7mle, t. 9 1. 4. — " While I surveyed 
this divej'sity of sects prevaiUng on the face ol 



56 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

not measured by the standard of its own 
peculiar creed. All perhaps are alike 
zealots ; the difference is^that the zeal of 
some is their privilege, and of others 
their c?ime.* The Irish, nationally con- 
sidered with respect to their prevailing 
rehgion, n^ver were a bigoted people, 
though the vivacity of their imagination 
has sometimes devoted them to supersti- 



the earth, and accusing one another of error 
and falsehood, I inquired, ' Which is the 
right ?' Each replied : * It is ours ; we alone 
possess the truth, and all others are in mistake.* 
— .< And how do you know this ?' — * Because 
God himself has declared it'—' Who told you 
so ?' — ^ Our minister, who is well acquainted 
with the divine will : he has ordered us to be- 
lieve this, and accordingly we do believe it. — 
He assures us that all who contradict him 
speak false, and therefore we do not listen to 
them." 

* " Helas ! si I'homme est aveugle, ce qui 
fait son tourment, fera-t-il encore son crime ?" 

De Volneijf ch. iv. p. 24. " Alas ! if man 

is blind, shall this blindness, which constitutes 
his misery, be also imputed to him as a crime ?*' 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 57 

tioiis illusion. When Christianity took 
the lead of druidisra in Ireland, it was 
preserved and nurtured by the same mild 
principles of toleration, which suffered 
its admission ; and though the druidical 
tenets flourished for two centuries after 
the arrival of the first christian mission- 
ary in the island, yet neither historic re- 
cord, nor oral tradition, advances any 
detail of religious persecution adopted 
on either side. The tenets preached by 
the christian missionary, or the argu- 
ments opposed by the heathen contro- 
vcrtists, awakened no further interest in 
the public consideration, than a desire to 
embrace that mode of faith, which came 
home with most force to reason, and to 
truth, ff the arguments held out were 
not always attended with conviction, the 
doubtful superiority was never decided 
at the svrord's point ; if the cross was 
sometimes unavailingly raised, the arm* 



* " Can tliat church be the church of Christ," 
says the tolerant bishop of Novogorad, " whose 
arm is red to the shoulder with human gore?'* 



.38 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

which supported it was not protected 
from injury by the egis of toleration ; nor 
were tortures invented, persecution en- 
forced, or oppressions exercised, to ob- 
tain the abjuration of a long-cherished 
tenet, to prove the orthodoxy of ii doc- 
trinal point, or to establish the infallibility 
of a speculative theory.* As yet free 
from that fanatic spirit which strews the 
earth with human victims, and still '' op- 
poses man against the murderer man," 
the Irish would have rejected with hor- 



* " Cesar et Pompee,'* says Voltaire in his 
English Letters, " ne sont pas fait la guerre 
pour savoir si les fioulets sacrees daivent man- 
ger et boir^ ou bien manger seulement ; ni pour 
savoir si les pretres devaient sacrifier avec leur 
chemise sur leur habit, ou leur habit sur leur 
chemise. Non ! bes horreurs etatient reserves 
pour la religion de la charite*' — " Cesar and 
Pompeydid not fight to determine whether the 
consecrated fowl ought to eat and drink, or to 
eat only ; nor whether the priests should offici- 
ate with their surplice over their gown, or their 
gown over their surplice. No : these horrors 
were reserved for the religion of charity." 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 59 

ror and incredulity that prophecy, which 
should have foretold such a series of re- 
ligious barbarities as attended the expul- 
sion of the Moors from Spain, the con- 
version of the Mexicans in America, the 
revocation of the edict of Nantz, and 
the establishment of the popery laws in 
their own country. 

Surely the experience of successive 
ages should hold out some beacon to 
those minds, which the pernicious and 
illusory light of intolerance misleads ; 
and evince the dreadful effects which 
have been invariably produced, by suf- 
fering an abstract opinion to prevail over 
the social affections of mankind, either in 
politics or in religion."* 



* The catholics of that part of Silesia con- 
quered by Frederic the great, were so sensible 
of the toleration they enjoyed from the liberal 
conduct of their conqueror, that they have ever 
since remained faithful to the Prussians ; while 
those of their compatriots, who had successful- 
ly resisted his victorious arms, have since sub- 
mitted to the French influence. 



60 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

The toleration of the Germans on religious 
points, is deservedly poverbial. The pati'on of 
Luther, and the first protestant potentate, was 
an elector of Saxony ; and notwithstanding the 
present electoral family has for four genera- 
tions back been Roman catholics, they continue 
to live in the most perfect harmony with their 
Protestant subjects. 

Catherine of Russia dispersed among her Ma- 
hometan subjects eighty thousand copies of the 
Koran ; while among her Christian subjects 
she circulated such works as were likely to es- 
tablish them most firmly in their religion. Yet, 
during her long and prosperous reign, the voice 
of revolt or insurrection was never heard to mur- 
mur. But in what age, or in what country, has 
Tolerrition displayed her radiant banner, and 
found her standard deseited by peace, by happi- 
ness, and unanimity ? 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 61 



SKETCH VI. 



AT a period when national taste, like 
national spirit, lingers through its last 
era of decay in the Irish breast, it is as 
rare as it is delightful to meet with one, 
for whom every relic of Irish antiquity 
possesses a peculiar interest; who con- 
templates with pleasure even the least-im- 
portant production of antient wit in his 
own country; and by an association of 
ideas which have their source in the a. 
mor p atria:, values ^\eiy little relic as 
exhibiting some genuine though minute 
testimony of that progress in the refine^ 
ments of life, which he fondly believer 
distinguished his native land, in those 
days when she w^as looked upon with ad- 
miration and respect by the people of o 



62 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

ther nations, and regarded with triumph 
by her own= 

To the national taste of Mr. O*** of 
C** house, in the bosom of whose charm- 
ing family I have spent some days since 
my arrival in this province, the remem- 
brance of which neither my memory nor 
my heart will be apt to relinquish, 1 stand 
highly indebted for what might be consi- 
dered as a honne bouche to the hitherto 
unsatisfied appetite of national virtu. — 
His library is stored with antiquities dis- 
covered amidst adjacent ruins, or dug 
out of the bogs on his own estate. A- 
mong those which peculiarly struck me 
were : 

An ur?i*, composed of the finest clay, 
highly polished, elegantly formed, and 
curiously carved. It was dug out of a 
sand-hill on the sea-shore near C*** 
house: and found nearly filled with ash- 



* This urn exactly resembles that described 
by Ware, and delineated by Vallency in his 
Collectanea. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. G3 

es and a kind of bituminous stuff, over 
which was placed a beautiful lozenge of 
thin variegated marble, once perhaps 
marked with an inscription now entirely 
defaced. The urn most probably con- 
tained the ashes of some Milesian prince, 
or sacred druid, to whom, in days of 
paganism, this privilege alone was ac- 
corded ; for when the body of the warri- 
or was consigned to the earth, his arms 
were buried with him. Thus the anci- 
ent Irish, like the ancient Etruscans, us- 
ed both modes of inhumation at the same 
time : and with that pertinacious adhe- 
rence to the distinction of the different 
orders of the state, which marked their 
ancient regime, the inequality of rank 
and office was ascertained beyond the li- 
mits of the grave ; and their love of order 
and subordination betrayed itself, where 
even all human distinction cease to be ob- 
served. 

A stylus made of brass, and curiously 
engraved, particularly engaged my at 
tention : and when I learnt that it we^s 



64 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

found in a deep grave amidst the ruins 
of Sligo abbey, the busy agency of fan- 
cy endowed it with an interest it proba- 
bly had no claim to ; and as I gazed on its 
point, I imagined that he who had carri- 
ed it with him to the tomb, and made it 
his companion in death, had probably 
made it the confidant of his thoughts, and 
the herald of his hopes, when living. — 
It might have been the property of some 
young monk of St. Dominic ; the vehi- 
cle of his sufferings and his love to some 
self-devoted Heloise, immured within the 
" relentless w^alls" of a neighbouring con- 
vent. But whether it was devoted to the- 
service of love or of religion, to detail- 
ing the miracles of a saint or the charms 
of a mistress, it interested me from the 
fanciful speculations it gave rise to. 

Two rings, dug out of some neighbour- 
ing ruins, the one studded with brass 
knobs, the other constructed of brass 
loops : and both resembling the talisman 
described by Vallencey. 



l>ATmOTiC SKETCHES. 65 

Disposed by the ardour of their ima- 
gination to every illusion of superstitious 
error, in no nation whatever were charms 
more prevailing than among the ancient 
Irish. The warrior or the knight never 
entered the field of battle without his 
ring, or amulet ; and on the fair bosoms 
of the noblest dames, sparkled the con- 
secrated talisman. Papal policy, taking 
advantage of this national superstition, 
consecrated seals, which were called ab- 
solution-seals*, and bore the following 
inscription : '^ Multitude of pardons to 
the sons of the son of ***/' &c. These 
were disposed of by the Romish see to 
the confessors: who enriched themselves 
by the traffic of salvation ; and retailed 
the remission of sins at the highest price 
that timid penitence could give, or exor- 
bitant priestcraft extort. 

A hridle-bit, and head-stall, of a very 
curious description, made of brass, and 



*One of these absolution-seals, once the pro- 
perty of a priest, was lately in the possession 
of Arthur Wolf, Esq, 

f2 



66 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

found in a bog in the vicinity. On the 
top of the head-stall was a little pillar of 
brass elegantly formed, which was most^ 
probably erected for the purpose of sus- 
taining the plume of feathers which de- 
corated tlie proud head of the Beltene- 
bros of some puissant knight of the val- 
ley : and indeed the finely carved spur 
which accompanied it, proved it the pro- 
perty of some Sir Launcelot or Sir Ber- 
tram. 

A brass hatchet, dug out of a bog in 
Terrerah, and exactly resembling that 
called by the ancient Irish tuah snaight ; 
derived says general Vallencey, from 
the Chaldee tuah, to strike. A small 
sptar or pike, the well known laineach 
catha of the ancient Irish. 

A brazen sword, twenty -two inches 
long, and exactly formed like that which 
general Vallencey describes as resem- 
bling the sword found in the plains of 
Canac. It had been dug out of a bog by 
a peasant; whose good dame, having 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 67 

performed the same operation on its rus- 
ty blade as destroyed the value of the 
shield of Martinus Scriblerus, convert- 
ed it to the domestic purposes of a hatch- 
et, from which degrading metamorphose 
Mr. O*** rescued this trusty weapon 
of some Irish Rolando or Rogero. 

An ancient Irish brogue, remarkable 
for the neatness of its form ; made of 
thin tanned leather^ fastened above the 
ancle in a manner both convenient and 
tasteful, and closely resembling the Ro- 
man buskin. 

A small box of beautiful marble, of an 
octagon form, the lid very delicately 
carved, and covered with inscriptions in 
a character resembling the Persic. It 
was found among the ruins of Sligo ab- 
l)ey^ and was probably the bon bonniere 
of some self-denying monk. 

Many other national relics presented 
themselves to my observation, which, 
though too numerous to detail, posses- 
sed scarcely less interest than those I 



68 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

have mentioned; though certainly not 
more so than the remains of druidical 
Cromlech, which rose almost immedi- 
ately beneath the windows of the libra- 
ry. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 69 



SKETCH VIL 



WHILE the mind, by an association 
of its ideas, discovers ^' a spell of a<> 
traction" in every thing, however intrin- 
sically valueless, which carries with its 
protracted existence the character of a- 
ges gone by '' with years beyond the 
flood;" of objects which time has res- 
cued from the vicissitude of human e- 
vents, and which tradition has connect- 
ed with incidents of historic interest ; it 
pursues with an opposite sensation of de- 
light, every thing in the moral or natural 
world, which is touched by the charm of 
novelty, or which owes its interest to 
the rarity of its existence. Thus the 
most sublime objects of the creation ex- 
cite a less animated sensation in obser- 



70 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

vance than the liisus naturcty Avhose sin- 
gularity is probably its only excellence. 
This observation insensibly suggested 
itself, as I turned with indift'erence from 
a very noble view of the ocean, to be- 
hold with eager curiosity the water-flight 
of Glencar. 

The water-flight of Glencar derives 
its source from the summit of a lofty hill 
whose base it scarcely reaches, if the 
wind is in a certain point ; there it is a- 
gain carried perpendicularly back, form- 
ing a species of waterspout. Nothing 
can be more splendidly beautiful than its 
appearance when seen under the influ- 
ence of an unclouded sun, rising like a 
pillar of light : the least variation of the 
air breaks it into a feathery spray, which 
falls at a considerable distance, like the 
misty shower of a summer's evening 
tinged with the departing glow of the- ho- 
rizon. 

Nor is the water-flight of Glencar the 
only aquatic curiosity in the neighbour- 
hood of Sligo. The hill of Knock -na- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 71 

shong, or the Hill of the Hawk, is from 
its elevation the first point of land seen 
on this coast at sea, and has become a 
kind of land-mark to mariners. Yet 
notwithstanding its altitude, and its dis- 
tance from the shore, its summit con- 
tains a small well, which ebbs and flows 
with the tide. Of both the mountain 
and the well, tradition has preserved ma- 
ny miraculous talcs. 



/r 



/2 PATRIOTIC SKET "HE8. 



SKETCH VIII 



THE poverty of the lower orders of 
every nation is always found to derive 
its source less from national vice, than 
political grievance. The j)Overty of the 
lower orders of the Irish is equally ob- 
vious in its causes, and melanclioly in 
its effects. At certain seasons of the 
year, the high-roads, and even the main 
streets, of every town and village of Ire- 
land, are infested with groupes of mendi- 
cants, who exhibit to the eye all the sad 
variety of wretchedness which '' flesh is 
heir to.'' These are not common beg 
gars, who make it a profession to live at 
the expence of the community ; and who 
indulge their propensities to idleness and 
vice, by imposing on the unregulated be 
nevolencc of those 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 73 



<< Whose pity gives ere charity begins :" 

they are the necessitous families of the 
Irish peasants. 

When the season of employment is 
over, when the necessity of human la- 
bour is considerably disproportioncd to 
the population of the country, as is in- 
variably the case in all grazing-countics 
of Ireland, where no manutactory offers 
the avocation to the superllux of willing 
industry ; and when the scanty hire of 
tlic labourer, during the short season it 
is paid, affords no little treasure stored 
to ward off the wants of an inactive sea- 
son ; the Irish peasant quits the spot 
where he once 

" Sat him down the monarch of a shed ;" 

quits the family, dearer to his heart from 
the pang it feels for them ; and beckoned 
by hope, or urged by despair, departs 
for a distant province, or even a distant 
land, in search of that employment, and 

G 



71 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

that reward^ which his own impoliticly 
denies. 

When the strained eye of sorrowing 
affection has followed the father and the 
husband, even till fancy gives what dis- 
tance snatches from its view, the mother 
closes the door of her desolate cabin ; 
and when, as is generally the case, her 
family are too helpless to relinquish her 
maternal cares and enable her to work, 
followed by her little children, and fre- 
quently by an aged parent, beggary is 
embraced as the only alternative to want 
and famine*. Sometimes with an infant 



* I this day overtook a mendicant groiipe 
who were with clifficuUy creeping on before 
me : the mother, a delicate-looking woman, had 
a child on her back, another infant in a deep 
decay hung on the shoulder of a girl of twelve 
years old, and two more little ones followed. — 
1 asked the woman what profession her husband 
was of; she said, " he was a slave ;" for it is 
])y this term that the labouring peasantry of Ire- 
land invariably designate themselves. The v/o- 
m,)n looked iil : I inquired the cause. Shere- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. VO 

oil her back, and another in her arms, 
while the ablest of her little train is always 
charged with the tin vessel which carri- 
es the sour milk supplied by charity, and 
another infant wanderer sustains the 
weight of the blanket which constitutes 
the only covering thrown over them at 
night, she commences her sad and soli- 
tary wanderings. How frequently, and 
in what opposite seasons, have I beheld 
these helpless and wretched groupes 
straggling along the high-roads, or re- 
posing their wearied limbs beneath the 
shelter of a ditch ! I have seen the feet of 
the heavily-laden mother totter through 
winter snows beneath her tender bur- 
then : while the frost-bitten limbs of her 
infant companions drew tears to their 
eyes, which in the happy thoughtlessness 
of childhood had never been shed to the 



plied that in those cabins where they gave her 
a lodging " for God's sake," she had for some 
nights back lain on wet straw, the rain which 
had continued for some days having penetrated 
through the roof of her lodging. 



76 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

unconscious misery of their situation, 
had not bodily pain taught them to flow. 

I have met them wandering over those 
heaths, which aftorded no shelter to their 
aching brows, amidst the meridian ar- 
dours of a summer's day ; when violent 
heat and insupportable fatigue, rendered 
the stream they stooped to drink, a lux- 
ury the most exquisite. I have met them 
at the door of magisterial power, and 
seen them spurned from its threshold by 
him who should have redressed their 
grievances or relieved their wants ; and 
1 have seen them cheerfully received in- 
to the cabin of an equally humble, but 
more fortunate compatriot, where their 
wants were a recommendation to bene- 
volence, and their number no check to 
its exertion. For never yet was the door 
of an Irish cabin closed against the sup- 
pliant who appealed to the humanity of 
its owner*. 



* As soon as a mendicant groupe appears at 
their door, it receives the accustomed kead- 
mille-a faltha ; the circle round the fire is en- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 77 

In Ireland there are no poor laws. In 
Ireland the reins of magisterial influence 
are loosely held ; and those to whose 
hands they are consigned are seldom sti- 
mulated to exertion, where self-interest, 
or party prejudice, affords no powerful 
incentive. The ill-conducted police of 
the country-towns of Ireland is a natio- 
nal disgrace; while that countless hordes 
of wretches are suffered to wander unre- 
lieved, and indeed unnoticed, is a^ stain 
on national humanity. Casual bounty 
can afford but transient redress • it lies 
to a certain degree within the jurisdiction 
of the magistracy, to render that bounty 
unnecessary by examining into the cau- 
ses of that wretchedness which so fre- 
quently appeals to it ; and by either en- 
deavouring to redress the grievance, or 
punish the imposition, which equally fling 
an odium on the character of that coun- 
try whose negligent police has so long 



larged ; a fresh supply of potatoes brought for- 
ward ; and shelter for the night, and clean 
straw to repose on, voluntarily offered. 
g2 



78 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

slumbered over both*. The establish- 
ment of manufactories in the remote 
parts of Ireland, would undoubtedly be 
the most effectual check to the progress 
of mendicancy ; but can there be no me- 
dium adopted between the great ex- 
tremes of idle poverty and affluent in- 
dustry ? 



* The inhabitants of Crete, says Montes- 
quieu, used a veiy singular method to keep the 
principal magistrates dependant on the laws : 
part of the citizens rose up in arms, put the 
magistrates to flight, and obUged them to re- 
turn to a private life. This was supposed to 
be done in consequence of the law. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 79 



SKETCH IX. 



I AM at present residing in that part 
of Ireland where the association of thrasii- 
ers first arose. I am consequently sur- 
rounded by those who formed that asso- 
ciation : a peasantry poor, laborious, ve- 
hement, and enterprising ; capable of 
good or ill ; in the extremes of both ; left 
to the devious impulse of either ; but of- 
tener impelled by the hardest necessity 
to the latter, than allured to the former, 
by kindness, by precept, or reward. — ■ 
Punished with rigorous severity when 
acting wrong, but neglected, unnoticed^ 
and unrecompensed when acting right ; 
forming the last link in the chain of hu- 
man society, and treated with contempt 
because unable to resist oppression, It 



80 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 

was with one of these beings, who in the 
strictest sense, daily performed " the pe- 
nalty of Adam/' and nightly, perhaps, 
assumed the daring character of insur- 
gency, that I had some days back the 
following conversation : 

'^ Are you laying in your winter's fire ?" 
<^ No young lady, I am cutting this turf 
for his honour." 

'' What is your hire by the day ?" — 
'' Sixpence one half, and threepence the 
other half of the year*." 

" Have you a family ?" — ^' I have a 
wife and six children." 

" Then of course you must have some 
o-round for their maintenance ?' — " Oh ! 
yes, two acres at 61. an acre ; but what 



* I have been assured, however, that six- 
pence a day, throughout the year, is in gene- 
ral the averaged hire in most parts of Con- 
naught. Many persons still living remember 
it so low as fourpence. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 81 

with the tythe proctor, the priest's dues 
being raised, and the weaver having dou- 
bled his prices, that day goes by well e- 
nough, when we can afford a drop of 
milk to moisten the potatoes for the 
young ones.'' 

He paused for a moment, cast his eyes 
to heaven, shook his head expressive- 
ly, and then abruptly applied himself to 
his labour with an effort of overstrain- 
ed exertion, that seemed to derive its e- 
nergy from feelings that dewed his rough 
cheek with tears, flowing from the sad 
heart of the father and the husband.* 



* Since the above was written, a young pea- 
sant in Westmeath gave me the following ac- 
count of his family, which I believe is an epi- 
tome of the general state of the peasantry in a 
county not 30 miles from the metropolis. — 
The boy was the eldest of seven children 
though scarcely twelve years old, and of course 
the only one able to labour ; in the summer 
and harvest season he earned fourpence a day, 
his father worked for sixpence and eightpence 
a day through the year j they paid six pounds 



82 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

'' If wc do not go to the very origin 
and first ruling cause of a grievance," — 
says Edmund Burke, " we do nothing :" 
and if we resort to the light of truth and 
evidence of fact, it will be found that 
with respect to every national grievance 
or political disorder in Ireland, for near- 
ly five hundred years back, a mode of 
conduct has been pursued, partial in it^ 
eflects, unavailing in its influence, and 
nutritive to public evil by an apparent 
blindness to the pristine existence of that 
evil, and by the rigidly coercive mea- 
sures exerted against its natural but fa- 
tal effects. Still careless and perhaps ig- 
norant of the cause, still attentive only 
to the result, the rest of discontent has 



for an acre of oats, forty shillings a year for 
grass for their cow, and forty shillings for their 
cabin and a little ground for their potatoes ; in 
Avinter when the cow was dry, they lived upon 
oaten bread, and potatoes and salt. Engaged 
with the care of seven children, the mother 
could give little assistance except by spinning 
sometimes : and out of the year's hire of the 
father, Sundays and holidays were deducted. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 83 

only invigorated, by the topping of its 
branches, and the pruning of its suck- 
ers. 

The first settlement of the English co- 
lonists in the island took place at a mo- 
ment peculiarly favorable to such an cn- 
terprize : the devotional enthusiasm with 
which the Irish had applied themselves 
to letters, to the arts of poesy and song, 
and all their elegant, but frequently ener- 
vating concomitants, left them but ill 
qualified to oppose an hostile and savage 
enemy ; and sharing the inevitable des- 
tiny of all polished nations in a certain 
era of refinement, they sunk beneath the 
daring inroads of such barbarians as 
Greece has submitted to, and Rome was 
unable to oppose. To those who believe 
their fate has reached its clima:>^ of evil, 
every doubt wears the aspect of a hope, 
and every change the character of a be- 
nefit ; and the arrival of a few English 
barons and their followers on the Irish 
coast, at a moment when the Irisli spi- 
rit was harrasscd by the ceaseless sulYer- 



8i PATRIOTIC SKETCHKb. 

ing of civil dissention;, awaken a conso- 
latory expectation, and gave to the poli- 
tic strangers the air of protectors and 
the epithet of friends. 

From that moment the mass of the 1- 
rish people became affectionate to the 
British government ; and if tlie attesta- 
tions of historians* are to be credited, if 
the native tone of the minds of the Irish 
was attentively studied, it will be found 
that though that aftcction may be forced, 
it can never be voluntarily or causelessly 
withdrawn from its object. 

But the government which they, the 
Irish, loved, was still counteracted in e- 



* " I am well assured that the Irish desired 
to be admitted to the benefit of English law, 
not only in tlieir petitions," Sec. — Davis, p. 88. 

It was a circumstance, however, not a little 
flattering to the Irish, that while the benefit of 
English laws was denied them, the English 
colonists adopted tlie ancient Irish system of 
legislation. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 85 

very intention formed in their favour. — 
The claims which they made in the ex- 
pecting confidence of their hearts, re- 
mained unrealized, because they were 
unheard :* for it was ever^, as it is now, 
the singular destiny of Ireland to nourish 
within her own bosom her bitterest ene- 
mies, who with a species of poHtical 
vampyrism, destroyed that source from 
whence their own nutriment flowed. — 
For still did they, who partially ruled 
over one country under the influence of 
the other, close every avenue to mutual 
and conciliating intelligence; and inva 
riably endeavoured to elYccta separation, 
from wliich they alone derived a benefit — 
^ benefit, however, precarious and un 
stable, as it was selfish and unjust. 

It was in vain that the Irish of other 
times, testified their anxiety to be admit- 



* " It is not,'* says the poet Saadi, " the ti- 
mid voice of a minister which can breathe to 
the ears of his king the complaints of the un- 
happy ; it is the cry of the people only that 
should ascend directly to the throne." 
ti 



86 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 

ted to the protection of the laws of En- 
gland ; it was in vain, even so early as 
the reign of Edward III, that they en- 
deavoured to represent the good that 
would naturally accrue from denization. 
^' For still/' says Sir John Davis, '^ the 
great lords of Ireland informed the king 
that the Irish might not be naturalized 
without damage and prejudice to the 
crown, or themselves ;"* and perhaps it 
is no unfounded assertion to advance, that 
the same disposition on the part of the I- 
rish to the English government, and the 
same ohatacle to its accomplishment on 
the part of their internal enemies, still ex- 
ist with undiminished forcef. Few coun- 



* " All the statutes from Henry IV. to 
Henry VII. speak of English rebels, and Irish 
enemies, as if the Irish had never been in the 
condition of subjects, but always out of the 
law." 

t The genius of Palermo, kept in the sena- 
torial palace, is represented as a man with a 
serpent on his breast, and this motto, Alienos 
nutrit^ se ipsimi devorat ; a figure that might 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. §7 

tries ever suffered more from the cease- 
less vicissitudes of civil dissention, than 
Ireland; and none ever preserved a more 
general uniformity of character^ disposi- 
tion, and principle, both as to its inter- 
nal and relative situation, for ages back. 
The same grievances have furnished the 
same complaints, and the same causes 
invariably produced the same effects. — 
The Irish heart was ever, and is still, 
warmly alive to the least appearance of 
confidence and kindness. The Irish spi- 
rit has ever been and ever will be, prompt 
to resist, what it would be dishonour to 
endure. 

It is a corroborating proof of the un- 
varying system of things in this country, 
that an assertion of the able minister of 
Elizabeth relative to the antecedent and 
then existing state of Ireland, may be in 
some respects applied to its present cir- 
cumstances, viz. '' That certain great 



answer equally well for the personification of Ire- 
land. 



88 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

men of Ireland cross and withstand the 
enfranchisement of the Irish : whereunto 
he adds, I must acquit the crown of En- 
gland of ill policy^ and lay the fault up- 
on t,he pride, covetousness, and ill coun- 
sel, of the English planted here."* — 
The line of demarcation which distin- 
guished the English-Irish from the native 
Is now indeed smoothed away by the ob- 
iiviating finger of time ; but the sordid 
spirit and unpatriotic principles, which 
guided the views, and directed the acti- 



* " When," says Burke, " the vvarfai'e of 
chicane succeeded to the war of arms and of 
hostility, statutes and a regular series of ope- 
ration was carried on, particularly from Chi- 
chester's time, in the ordinary courts of jus- 
tice ; and by special commissions and inquisi- 
tions, first under pretence of tenures, and then 
of titles in the crown, for the purpose of the 
total extirpation of the interest of the natives 
in their own soil : until this species of subtle 
ravage, being carried to the last excess of op- 
pression and insolence under lord Stafford, 
kindled the flames of that rebellion which broke 
out in 1641. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 89 

ons of the naturalized foreigner, still sur- 
vive in the breasts of some who have no 
ther claim to the title of Irishmen, than 
othat which the accident of nativity be- 
stows ; who, unalfectionate to their com- 
patriots, and unendeared to their coun- 
try, resolve every principle into self; and 
give to every local disturbance that ter- 
rific aspect of public danger, which ex- 
tends the empire of individual influence, 
and strengthens the chain of general op- 
pression.* This perhaps was nevermore 
strongly evinced than by those efforts 
made to misrepresent the recent rising 
of the thrashers ; and to call and punish 
that as a rebellion, which an officer of 
the crown, even in the act of pleading 
against the association alluded to, de- 
clares '^ as not partaking of any politi- 
cal complexion, or confined to any parti- 
cular party or persuasion ;" and that 
*^ its professed object was to regulate the 
payments of the church-tythes, of cer- 

* It is perhaps necessary to mention, that 
this sketch was begun and finished at two dif- 
ferent and distant periods, 
h2 



90 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

tain dues paid to the clergymen af the 
catholic church, and the rates of manu- 
al and manufacturing labour."* 

It is indeed a fact incontrovertible and 
asserted by those employed on the part 
of the crown against the persons termed 
thrashers, that this association had its 
rise in that source which at various and 
distant periods has given birth to such 
numerous associations among the Irish 
peasantry : associations unknown per- 
haps in any other country in the world, 
and which, animated by the same princi- 
ple, and sanctioned by the same plea of 
grievance, have taken the various names 
of white boys, hearts of steel, hearts of 
oak, break-ofday boys, right boys, defen- 
ders, and thrashers. Yet from the first 
whisper of insurrection, to its last mur- 
mur, the complaint of the people never 



* While the peasant 'of Ireland labours from 
sun-rise to sun-set, for sixpence a day, the work- 
ing mechanic regulates his prices by his de- 
sires, and the extortion of three days enables 
iiim to be idle and inebriate the other four. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 91 

breathed upon the government,* and 
their accusations were as local as the 
grievances which gave birth to them : — 
but every pecuniary exaction unjustly 
and exorbitantly levied on those whose 
hard-earned little ^' just gives what life 
requires, and gives no more," becomes 
an object of consideration ; and while 
with willing cheerfulness they conti'ibute 
to the maintenance of the ministers of 
one church, and from a principle of duty 



* A few days back, I met with two peasants 
who were making complaints of the oppression 
they endured. A gentleman asked them if 
they thought they were worse off since the uni- 
on. They replied, " they had never heard a- 
ny thing about the union, and did not know 
what it meant." After some further questi- 
ons, they were asked " if they did not know 
that there was now no Irish parliament. They 
replied, that all tJiey had heard was, that the 
parliament-books were sent away, and that the 
good luck of the country went with them. So 
full is the heart of an Irish peasant of his own 
grievance, and so little is his he^d troubled a- 
bout public affairs. 



92 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

and affection voluntarily support that of 
another,* it is little to be wondered at, 
if that extortion which drives them to the 
very barrier of penury and want should 
sometimes impel them beyond that of 
prudence and subordinationf. 

In the present instance they endeavour 
to palliate their conduct, by asserting, 
that to the usual exorbitant demands of 



* " It is no slight evil for a country sinking 
under the weight of taxes, to support a double 
hierarchy ; and some share of the expencc 
might perhaps, without injustice, be defrayed 
from the revenues of the present establishment, 
in parishes where every inhabitant is a catho- 
lic."— -Rex^zVw of Sir J. Throgmorton on the 
Cathqlic Question. 

t Lands in Ireland are generally held on free- 
hold leases, which throws the burthen of tithes 
upon the tenant chiefly : the collection being al- 
so principally in kind, renders it of course more 
odious, and the alternative is become insupport- 
able from the extortion of the tithe farmers.—* 
Ibid. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 93 

the tythet farmers, were added the in- 
creasing exactions of the middle-man^ 
the impositions of the weaver, and' the 
increased dues of the catholic clergy. 
These, they asserted, were exactions 
which sixpence a day was scarcely ade- 
qate to answer. These perhaps were the 
efficient causes which gave to the pity- 
ing eye of the traveller, roofless cabins, 
desponding contenanccs, squalid figures, 



t The payment of tithes among the Jews 
formed a part of the foundation of their repub- 
lic ; but on their first introduction into Chris- 
tendom, Charlemagne, who established them, 
found them opposed by the people ; " who, 
says Montesquieu, are rarely influenced by ex- 
ample, to sacrifice their interests, " and who 
considered them " as burthens quite independ- 
ant of the other charges of the establishment." 
A synod of Frankfort had recourse to their su- 
perstition to ensure their obedience, by pro- 
testing, that in the last famine the spikes of 
corn were found to contain no seed, the infer- 
nal spirits having devoured it all ; and that those 
spirits had been heard to reproach them with 
not having paid the tithes." Book xxxi. 339. 



94 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

and shuddering groups of literally naked 
children ; these were perhaps the latent 
sources of those emotions in which the 
lower orders of this country have been 
so frequently involved, and the main 
spring of that coalition of imprudent and 
unfortunate persons called thrashers ; 
who daringly seized in their own hands 
the power of summary retribution, pro- 
portioned and appropriate as they con- 
ceived to their real or fancied grievances, 
and according to the strict letter of their 
own old Brehon law. That they did thus 
dare to seize the means of redress in 
their own hands, was a conduct that no 
one can justify ; but that any other mode 
was left them, is a fact no one can esta- 
blish. 

The English country-gentleman, full 
of patriarchal kindness towards his te- 
nantry, will ask, '' Why did not these 
unfortunates apply for counsel and assis- 
tance to their land-lord, their paternal 
adviser and advocate r" But that tie, so 
firmly bound in days of feudal influence, 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 95 

and which still in a modified sense in 
most countries unites the extremes of ci- 
vil society, the lord of the soil to the 
peasant who cultivates it, in Ireland is 
bi'oken; or rather wholly dissolved: and 
the Irish peasant, while he venerates the 
name of the good old family under whom 
his forefathers worked, or for whom his 
forefathers bled, has now but the name 
only to revere ; while his heart turns des- 
pondingly from the middle-man, beneath 
whose influence he lives; and who would 
scarcely ameliorate his grievances, while 
conscious that he was himself the cause 
of many, and the sanction of all. 

It ever was, and is still, the conduct 
of a certain order of persons in Ireland, 
to shadow the light of government from 
the mass of the Irish people ; to give to 
causes of local and domestic disturbance, 
the invidious term of open rebellion ; and 
to drive by pitiless unkindness to acts of 
fatal desperation, a people who may be 
soothed into subjection, but who can ne- 
ver be harassed into a tame endurance 



96 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

of oppression ; a people whose national 
character aftords the noblest subject to 
philosophical observance, that human na- 
ture ever presented to the eye of reason 
and philanthropy.* 

When the thrashers first attracted no- 
tice in those counties where they first a- 
rose, it was not unusual to hear, even 
from those whose opinion carried most 
weight, that there was some ground for 
complaint among the Connaught peasan- 
try ; the nocturnal adventures of the in- 
surgents were then deemed rather whim- 
sical than mischievous ; were sometimes 
listened to with indifference, or laughed 
at as ludicrous; but the natural conse- 
quences of all pubHc commotions, how 



* " Nations are governed by the same me- 
thods, and on the same principles, by which an 
individual, without authority, is often able to 
govern those who are his equals or his superi- 
ors ; by a knowledge of their temper, and by 
a judicious management of it." — Thoughts on 
the Causes of the present Discontents^ ^c. iJJ'c. 
Bu rke. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 97 

ever apparently unimportant in their ten- 
dency and trivial in their origin, from 
their too frequently experienced and fa- 
tal result, should have taught those in 
whose hands the reins of timely suppres- 
sion were vested, the necessity of crush- 
ing the germ, if they had not the power 
of destroying its root. But if the inva- 
riable effects of a long-existing cause 
were foreseen, no exertion was made to- 
wards their early extinction : the thrash- 
ers indeed were instantly called a mise- 
rable, deluded and misguided people ; — 
degrading epithets, to which, how ever I- 
rish feelings have become almost callous. 
But among the many who thus designat- 
ed their hnmbler compatriots, and re- 
versing the maxim of Hamlet, taught 
them '' to assume the vice they had not," 
who was the benevolent the rational be- 
ing, to step fortli, to inquire into the 
cause of their discontent, to alleviate their 
sufferings, or dispel their delusion ? Did 
the head landlord, did the middle-man, did 
the magistrate, collect around them their 
misguided countrymen, and with an ap^ 



98 PATRIOTIC SKETCIiES. 

parent interest in their destiny, investi- 
gate the cause of their real, or probe the 
source of their fancied grievance, pro- 
mising their best individual efforts to the 
removal of the one, or simply proving 
to their untutored understandings the fal- 
lacy and danger of the other ? Oh, no ! 
a vehement, an impetuous, a brave but 
misguided peasantry, cai'cless of that life 
to which so few ties of human happiness 
attached them, unquestioned, unresisted, 
were suffered to accuinulalc in numbers, 
to strengthen in principle, to pursue that 
object which their sense of right upheld 
to them ; and neither redressed in one 
instance, nor opposed in another, to esta- 
blish the justice of their cause on the ba- 
sis of their progressive success ; and to 
become inebriate with that flow of for- 
tune which stronger heads seldom resist, 
and stronger minds seldom contemplate 
in its probable and approximating reflux.* 



* The thrashers were suffered, for a consi- 
derable time, to pursue their depredations on 
the fields of the tythe-farmers, unmolested and 
and almost unnoticed. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 99 

As long as the vengeance of the thrash- 
ers was confined to the tj the -farmers, 
the middle-man smiled at a retribution 
so summarily used; but when its spread- 
in^ effects threatened the most distant 
boundary of his own interest, he shrunk 
back upon himself with the same princi- 
ple of repercussion which actuates the 
tarantula when, retiring to the centre of 
her web, she darts with aocumulated ve- 
nom on the daring insect who flutters 
within the sphere of her enslaving domi- 
nion. 

It then became usual, from the well 
or ill-founded reports of every informer, 
for a few skirmishing parties to set out 
in quest of the insurgents ; frequently to 
escape from the hall of social enjoyment, 
or the banquet of festal revelry, and 
" hot with the Tuscan grape," to pursue 
amidst the doubtful shades of night " the 
idle visions of a heated brain ;" or, per 
haps less strictly Quixotorial, to fire at 
random on such fugitives as chance pre 
sented to their observation. 



100 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

That an insurrection which at this pe- 
riod wore so alarming an aspect ought 
not to have been suppressed in the first 
era of its existence, or firmly and deci- 
sively opposed in its state of maturer be- 
ing, is there a mind so weak or so inhu- 
man as to assert? To that rational poli- 
cy w^hich is ever the '' flail of faction." 
which is ever more solicitous to remove 
the grievance than to punish even the un- 
justifiable mode of redress imprudently 
seized on by the aggrieved, be it left to 
decide op the most efficacious mode to 
obviate the evil ; but that the partial and 
summary coercion adopted by certain in- 
dividuals, in the present instance, were 
neither correct in plan nor effective in 
execution, the result fully evinced. 

It was indeed at last discovered, that 
though firing at an odd man of an odd 
night might have been a chivalrous feat, 
it was far from being either a decisive or 
a successful one. Every bullet had not 
the political sagacity to lodge itself in the 
fervid brain of an insurgent ; the inno- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 101 

cent had sometimes a chance of suffer- 
ing with the guilty : and though they 
might '' fill a pit as well as better men," 
yet that cause was not weakened, whose 
professed opposers became obnoxious to 
the neutral as well as to the active party; 
while the moan of private sorrow min- 
gled with the murmurs of public discon- 
tent, and the pang of individual anguish 
exasperated the feelings of general dis- 
affection. 

But one mode now seemed left to des- 
troy the hydra-monster of a hitherto un- 
availing vengeance ; and unawed by the 
series of horrid events which, at no dis- 
tant intervals, for the space of five hun- 
dred years have distracted and impove- 
rished their country, a certain order of 
persons supplicated the governing pow- 
er of their nation to erect once more the 
standard of civil discord, and to estab- 
lish that law which every state reserves 
as its last resource against the unmasked 
appearance of open, daring, and avowed 
rebellion ! But what was the result o.f 
i2 



102 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

this patriotic application ? At the mo- 
ment when it was eagerly hoped that no- 
thing would be seen '■^ but man and steel, 
the soldier and the sword/- the British 
government rushed between the mass of 
the people of Ireland and a few of her 
degenerate sons ; and flinging the veil of 
her mercy over the errors of her impru- 
dent but unalienated subjects, turned a- 
side the poniard that aimed at the life- 
pulse of their hearts. 

For ever honoured be the memory of 
that administration which gave to the un- 
happy, the deluded people of Ireland, the 
full benefit of that sacred justice coeval 
with truth and with the God of Truth ; 
who, deaf to the interested application of 
the few, rescued the many from destruc- 
tion; who mercifully refused to send back 
the visionary insurgent to his comfortless 
hut, to brood, in the midst of his helpless 
family, over that grievance as poignant 
in idea as in fact, and which neither re- 
dressed, nor contradicted, would rankle 
with added force in his disappointed 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. lOS 

heart ; who saved the hard-earned pit- 
tance of the laborious peasant from the 
ravages of licensed insolence and the op- 
pression of delegated power; who turn- 
ed aside the musket that would have aw- 
ed the oppressed master in that home, 
where (though but the shelter of a bana- 
na-tree from the rays of a vertical sun (even 
the slave feels himself a king ; and who 
gave to the free-born subjects of the freest 
of all earthly states, the fair occasion to 
expose the cause by which they believed 
themselves agrieved, and to prove how 
far the effects were '' to be extenuated, " 
or had been '' set down in malice!"* 



* How firmly attached the Irish have ever been 
to the laws of England, and inimical to the slight- 
est appearance of military subjection, is not on- 
ly proved by Sir John Davis and his cotempo- 
raries, but strongly alluded to by Burke in his 
speech on the conciliation with America. " Af- 
ter," says he, " the vain project of militaiy 
government attempted in the reign of Eliza- 
beth, it was soon discovered that nothing could 
make Ireland English in civility and allegiance, 



104 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

It was reserved for the representative 
of the illustrious house of Russel to be 
the agent of that divine mission, which 
had for its object the peace and welfare 
of a nation ; and surely in that record 
where the gratitude of Ireland has traced 
in imperishable characters the names of 
her best friends, his will not be register- 
ed in an oblivious page. 



but your laws and your form of legislature. It 
was not English arms, but the English consti- 
tution, that conquered Ireland 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 105 



SKETCH X. 



*' In Ireland, '^ says a modern writer, 
*^ the harpers (the original composers and 
depositaries of their music) have till lately 
been uniformly cherished and supported 
by the nobiHty and gentry." It is indeed 
but too true, that that warm ardent spirit 
of national enthusiasm which hung de- 
lighted on the song of national melody, to 
which many an associated idea, many an 
endeared feeling, lent their superadded 
eharm, has now faded into apathy ; and 
neither the native strain, nor native sen- 
timent, which gave it soul, touches on the 
spring of national sensibility, or awakens 
the dormantenergy of national taste. The 
ear, desultory in its musical enjoyments 



106 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

formed to the style of foreign harmony, 
and scholared into taste by the theories of 
recondite science, may indeed no longer 
convey to the heart that poignant thrill 
of national emotion which shakes the 
firm nerved Swiss " even to dissolution," 
when the strain of his mountain-liberty * 
abruptly floats on his awakened sense. 
But Oh ! surely that untravelled heart, 
which has never felt the throb of absence 
far from the home of its affection, that 
unsophisticated sense which has never 
dissolved to the impassioned influence of 
Italian composition, might still hang with 
national pride and national delight upon 
those strains which owe their birth to the 
musical genius of their native country ; 
upon those strains which harmonize with 
every emotion of the soul, and which 
whether breathed in sorrow or in joy, 
are still true to nature and nature's dear- 
est feelings. 



* Were the feelings of national liberty and 
national affliction to be illustrated by a sound, 
the BentzV'de-V aches and Erin go brack would 
surely be found to inspire their essence. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 107 

The enthusiastic passion for music* 
which has ever distinguished the people 
of Ireland, still remains unabated; but 
by the puerile vanity of adopting a re- 
finement which removes the ear from the 
heart, their own beautiful airs are the on- 
ly compositions which now fail to attract 
their notice or secure their admiration: 
yet let me not (in the ardour of that in- 
dignation which swells my heart for my 
native country), while I behold the in- 
difference, the neglect with which she is 
in so many instances contemplated by 
many of her own children, let me not 
forget how often and how recently I have 



* A few evenings ago, Mr. O'Neil the har- 
per assured a friend of mine, that having been 
received into the house of a Mr. Irvine of this 
country about fifty years past, he found assem- 
bkd thiity-seven musicians, professional and 
private. " I made," he added, " the thirty-eighth ; 
and before wc concluded the evening, a piper 
claimed admittance, and according to the good 
old Irish custom was received, and accommo- 
dated with a good supper and b^d.*' 



108 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

beheld the most animated emotions pro- 
duced in an Irish heart by the influence 
of an Irish song : how often I have be- 
held the sweet testimony of a feeling 
tear shed to the witchery of a national 
strain, even in those circles where the 
polish of fashion had smoothed down the 
energetic sensibilities of nature ; and 
where taste and science too frequently 
regulate the empire of opinion, indepen- 
dant of the feelings of the heart, inde- 
pendant of the sentiments of the mind. 
There are still few houses in the interi- 
or parts of Ireland, where a musician of 
some description is not constantly retain- 
ed or welcomely received ; who in coin- 
cidence with the prevailing gusto of the 
day, is always more ready to play a Ger- 
man waltz than a jig, or a French cotil- 
lion than a planxty. But Irish harpers 
(once so cherished and revered) arc as 
rarely to be met with as encouragement 
to Irish music. A very old and a very 
wretched being, with an ill-strung in- 
strument of greats antiquity suspended 
from his bending shoulder, is sometimes 



109 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES* 

seen creeping along the road-side, slip- 
plicating at the gates of a great man^s 
mansion, or hailed at the door of a poor 
man's hut. But with a taste for nation- 
al music, has subsided all encourage- 
ment to its professors.* The Irish pea- 
sant indeed still retains an idolatrous 
fondness for those strains his ear has 
learnt from his heart: a song beguiles 
the labours of the day ; a song ushers 
in the repose of the night ; a song effu- 
ses his joys, and a song is the interpreter 
of his sorrows. Of the latter fact the 
following circumstance is illustrative : 



* The bardict order however is by no means 
extinct in Ireland. What they were, and what 
they are still capable of being, the venerable 
O'Neil is a striking instance. Many female har- 
pers still wander through the remote parts of 
Ireland. At the harper's prize-ball at Granard 
in 1782, a woman of the name of Bridges ob- 
tained the second prize. The names of the fe- 
male bards of other times were handed down 
for several generations, and repeated with de- 
votional respect. 
K 



110 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

But a few days back, a musical pro- 
fessor, from whom I had the anecdote, 
was walking in the vicinity of Sligo at a 
very early hour, when a sound, wild, low 
and plaintive, sought his ear ; and ap- 
proaching the spot from whence it seem- 
ed to proceed, he observed an elderly fe- 
male leaning over a little paling which 
encircled a cabin. Her hair was dishe- 
velled, her eyes full of tears and her voice 
though broken and inarticulate, respired 
in the intervals of her deep-heaved sobs, 
a melancholy recitative accompanied by 
these words — " A few days are gone by ; 
hhe entered this gate in all her beauty 
and her health : to-morrow she will pass 
it without life, and she never will enter 
it more.*-' This funereal sons: was the im- 



* A parallel instance of parental and melo- 
lodized affliction is to be found in Chandler*s 
Travels into Asia Minor, " One evening com- 
ing from some ruins in a Greek village," says 
he, " we found an old womaii sitting by the 
church on the grave of her daughter, who had 
been two years buried, over whom she lament- 
ed aloud, singing in an uniform and dismal ca- 
dence." 



JPATRIOTIC SKETCHES. Ill 

promtu requiem of a wretched mother, 
whose only daughter, a young and love- 
ly girl, had expired the night before. 

If we are to form our opinion of the 
original genius of Irish music from the 
accounts handed down by Cambrensis, 
the pathos which it now betrays was cer- 
tainly not its primeval character. 

^* But music," says lord Verulam, — 
*^ feedeth the disposition which it find- 
eth." The popular feelings of a nation 
may be frequently discovered to a cer- 
tain degree, in the character and idiom 
of its native melodies ; and the very key 
in which those melodies are composed, 
may give a refined intimation of the po- 
litical circumstances under which they 
were first breathed. Thus the Irish dur- 
ing the long series of their sufferings, ef- 
fused not their tuneful sorrows in the 
cheery, open, fulness of the major mode. 
Their voices, broken and suppressed, 
faintly rose by minor thirds ; and the 
sentiment of anguish communicated to 



112 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 



the song of the persecuted bard, in less 
felicitous periods, by " his soul's sad- 
ness/' still breathes in Irish music, even 
though the efficient cause from whence 
it stole its plaintive character may no 
lonarer exist. 



•o' 



That rapidity, however, wliich Cam- 
brensis* remarks, is still preserved in a 



* " It is wonderful,** says the archdeacon 
of St. David's, " how in such precipitate rapi- 
dity of the fini^ers tlie musical proportions arc 
preserved, and by their art faultless through- 
out, in the midst of their complicated modula- 
tions and most intricate arrangement of notes, 
by a rapidity so sweet, an irregularity so regu- 
lar, a concord so discordant. The melody is 
rendered perfect and harmonious whether the 
chords of the diapason or diapente are struck 
together ; yet they always begin in a soft mode 
and end in the same, that all may be perfected 
in the sweetness of delicious sounds : then they 
enter on, and again leave their modulations, with 
much subtilty ; and the tingling of the small 
strings spoils with so much freedom under the 
deep notes of the bass, delights with so much 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 113 

certain description of Irish song, where 
every note melodizes a word, and of 
which the fine old air of Plai Racah 7ia 
Roiirk, or O'Rourk's noble feast, is a 
very striking instance.* 

So invariably do the Irish make the 
ear the path to the heart, so frequently 
is sound commingled with sentiment, and 
the affections of the mind with organic 
sensation, that even the prevailing super- 
stition of the lower classes borrows much 
of its illusory creed from the exquisite 
sensibility of their ear; and supernatural 
sounds are not only devoutly believed, 
but always expected, as the herald of an 
important event, or singular incident. 
Death itself is predicted by the melancho- 



delicacy, and soothes so softly, that the excellence 
of their art seems to lie in concealing it." 

* Even the most rapid Irish air, when played 
slow, will be found to contain some lurking 
shade of pathos, and even to possess something 
of that melancholy luxury of sound which cha- 
racterises the Arabian music. 
k2 



114 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 

Jy moan of the benshi ;* and the heavi 
est curse that vengeance bx-eathes upon 
the object of its direst hatred is, " the 
screech of the morning be upon you ;"f 
a curSe never to be heard w^ithout a thrill 
of horror and emotion. 

The inordinate passion which the Irish 
have in all ages betrayed for music, must 
have eventually produced an eager pur- 
suit of such means as would tend to its 



* Mr. Walker ingeniously traces the origin 
of the benshi to the passing breeze brushing 
over the strings of the harp which the sorrow- 
ing bard h;mg up in the hall, on the death of 
his chief or patron. 

t When the c^awn rises for the first time on 
the remains of a beloved and deceased object^ 
those feelings of sorrow which were till then 
faintly expressed, or silently betrayed, become 
wild and vehement in their indulgence ; and 
the shriek of despair which ushei-s in the davm's 
grey light to the bed of death, may indeed well 
be considered as an anathema by the ear and 
the heart on which it falls. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 1 15 

gratification. Musical instrument-ma- 
kers are in fact to be found in many of 
the smallest towns of Ireland^ and gene- 
rally among men of the lowest professi- 
ons. Some instances have come under 
my own observation, too singular to pass 
unnoticed. 

In the town of Strabane, a poor man, 
originally a hedge-carpenter, obtained 
some degree of excellence in making vi- 
olins and flutes, built a small organ, and 
was frequently called in by the most res- 
pectable families in the neighbourhood, 
to tune or mend piano-fortes, harpsi- 
chords, &c. 

There is now resident in Dublin a 
young Connaught man, who works as a 
common carpenter, and who has made a 
small piano on which he performs, self- 
taught in the theory of music as in the 
construction of a musical instrument. 

A remarkably ^ne toned organ with 
six stops has been lately placed in the 
Roman-catholic chapel at Mulingar — 



116 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES* 

built by a poor wheel-vvright, a native of 
the town. He had commenced bagpipe - 
maker a few years before without any 
previous instruction, and shortly after 
completed a good piano-forte. 

But the most striking and singular in- 
stance of this nature which this, or per- 
haps any other, country presents, is ex- 
hibited in the musical and mechanical 
talents of Mr. John Egan, tlie only pe- 
dal-harp maker in Ireland. Brought up 
from his earliest youth to the labours of 
the anvil, Mr. Egan was still serving his 
time to a smith, when chance threw in 
his way a French harp. A natural fond- 
ness for music, and the curiosity and ad- 
miration excited by a lirst view of the 
most beautiful and picturesque of all in- 
struments, induced him to examine its 
machinery ; and all the money he pos- 
sessed in the world was shortly after 
laid out in the purchase of such materi- 
als as were requisite for the construction 
of a pedal harp, which he accomplished 
with so much success, as to find a high 



PTRIOTIC SKETCHES. 117 

and immediate sale for it. He is now 
very extensively engaged in the busi- 
ness, and may be ranked among the first 
of the profession ill Great Britain.* His 
harps however have one fault, which 
though it does not influence the opinion 
of true judges, or prevent their exporta- 
tion to Scotland, and even to parts of En- 
gland, is a frequent barrier to their sale 
in Ireland, namely, that their maker is 
an Irishman. 



* By an invention of which he has all the 
merit, he has so simplified the machinery, that 
the springs hitherto found necessary to retm'n 
the pedals, he has laid aside ; which renders 
the harp less liable to go out of order, much 
easier to repair, and enables the ingenious in- 
ventor to sell a pedal harp nearly one-half cheap^ 
er than it could be imported. 



118 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 



SKETCH XL 



THE barony of Tyrerah is a remote 
tract of land, skirting the most roman- 
tic part of the coast of Sligo ; twenty- 
seven miles long, and sheltered by a con- 
tinued chain of momitains, above whose 
varying elevation the '^ cloud-capt" sum- 
mits of Knock -na-shoug, Knockna-chree 
and Nephin-noble, are conspicuously 
distinguished. The old traditions of the 
country assert, that the barony of Tyre- 
rah, as well as that of Tyrawley, deriv- 
ed its name from Fion-maccumhal, or 
Fingal, the far-famed hero of Osian's 
songs, as he stood on the summit of one 
of the Ox mountains, where he was de- 
voting some days to the pleasures of the 
chace. My heart had long owed a pilgri- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 119 

mage to this remote, and, I believe, little- 
known barony; for it was the residence 
of the dear and respected friend for whom 
that heart had long throbbed with an in- 
variable pulse of gratitude, tenderness, 
and affection. I had, indeed, long been 
anxious to indulge both my feelings, my 
curiosity and prevailing taste, by this 
visitation, which was eminently produc- 
tive of the highest gratification to all. 

The road which leads from the town 
of Sligo to Tyrerah is varying and ro- 
mantic in its aspect, hanging over the 
sea-coast, and beneath the shelter of the 
loftiest mountains. The bay of Sligo, 
the fairy land of Hazlewood, the distant 
heights of Benbo and Benbulbin ; the 
opposite shores of the bay, crowned with 
the majesty of Knock-na-ree ; a partial 
view of the town of Sligo ; and the 
woods which skirt the adjacent lakes ; 
are caught, and lost, at intervals, amidst 
the devious windings of the road which 
passes directly through the village of Bal- 
lysadere. This little village lies on the 



120 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

banks of a river which has its source in 
the mountains ; and forms in its rapid 
course, over a steep and unequal bed, a 
beautiful succession of water-falls, which 
wear the singular appearance of an a- 
quatic amphitheatre. The rapid and re- 
pulsed stream breaks over rocks iz oni 
point to point, for the space of more than 
two hundred yards ; till with congregat- 
ed force it reaches the principal steep, 
which is upwards of fifteen feet perpen- 
dicular. 

These romantic cataracts, when seen 
through the dark woods which once sur- 
rounded them, and with the full relief of 
Knock-na-ree in the rear, must have 
ranked amongst the noblest scenic fea- 
tures in the world. Over the deepest of 
the falls, and on the point of a little pro- 
montory, which appears flung between 
the confluence of the river and the bay, 
into which it pours its waters, hang the 
ruins of an abbey, founded by St. Fit- 
chin in the seventh century. It after- 
w^ards belonged to the regular canons 
of St. Austin, and during the intolerant 



PAiKlOTIC SKETCHES. 121 

persecutions carried on in this country 
in Elizabeth's day, the abbey, with aii 
its revenues, was bestowed on Brian 
Fitzwilliam, who assigned it over to Ed- 
ward Crofton, escheator-general of Ire- 
land, and founder of the Crofton fami- 
ly in this province.* I understand—- 
that, till within these few years, the ab- 
bey w^as in some degree of preservation? 
and a fragment of the town still remains, 
which exhibits some traces of good ma- 
sonry. Near Ballyredon lies a lead 
mine, which, though very rich, has ne- 
ver been worked with success ; and Gla- 
nesk and Lockalt are but at an inconsi- 
derable distance, Avhile the luxurious is- 
land of Ylanabaolane, which forms the 
bay of Sligo, gives considerable interest 

* Mr. Young asserts, that most of the gen- 
tlemen in this part of the country were Crom- 
weirs soldiers, and many of them new settlers 
from Wales, as the Joneses, Morgans, Wynns, 
Sec. &c. Many, however, of the descendants 
of the Milesian race are still to be found in it, 
and some among the most distinguished per- 
sons of the country, as the family of tlie 
O'Haras. 



122 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

to a vein of scenery, which wants no- 
thing but plantation to render it the most 
picturesque which imagination can de- 
vise, or nature present. 

L# # # house, the ancient family-seat 
of sir M* * * c* * *n, bart. was the goal 
of my little journey, and I reached its 
venerable avenue at a season of the day 
peculiarly favourable to the soft chiaro- 
oscura of picturesque beauty : with the 
old gloomy avenue of an ancient mansi- 
on-seat, there is, I think, invariably con- 
nected a certain sentiment which bears 
the heart back to ^^ other times," and 
awakens it to an emotion of tender re- 
verence, and melancholy pleasure. For 
mys(^lf, I have never walked beneath its 
interwoven branches uninfluenced by a 
certain feeling, in which memory's pen- 
jiive spell mingled with the speculations 
of awakened fancy. 

The lands and demesne of L* * * he 
almost along the shores of the Atlantic 
ocean, and immediately beneath tlie shel- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 123 

ter of Knockachree,* from whose rug- 
ged base swells the lesser chain of the 
Ox-mountains, whose sides were once 
covered with luxuriant woods, and from 
whose towering summit i-ush innumera- 
ble torrents, which lesseninginto streams 
in their deep descent, water the plains 
beneath, and flow into the ocean. The 
shores on the other side of the bay are 
romantic and striking ; the beautiful pe- 
ninsula of Tandsago intervenes its cul- 
tivated landscapes, and most happily 
breaks the view, while the rude dashing 
of the waves against the bar, lends an 
effective sound ; and the back scenerv 
afforded by the mountains, wears a cha- 
racter of wildness and sublimity, which 
finishes a picture that betrays no defici- 
ency but from that want under which it 
labours in common with the rest of the 
country, the want of plantation. 

• Of the old castle of L* * * nothing 
now remains but a few fragments that 

* Knockachree, or the " hill of the heart,*' 
when measured from the shore, is supposed to 
be one of the highest mountains in Ireland. 



i24f PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

mark its site, and are strewed amidst 
the vegetation which covers a cave, the 
probable asylum of many an unhappy 
fugitive in days of civil horror, or reli 
gious persecution. Near the spot where 
the castle once frowned, moulders the 
ruin of a small building, whose dilapi- 
dated portal still bears a Spanish inscrip- 
tion, intimating tliat it was the ^^ retreat 
of a priest and his yellow-haired compa- 
nion.^^ It was in fact erected, as tradi- 
tion asserts, by one of the lords of the 
castle, for his youngest son, who had in 
the Elizabethian day forfeited the reve- 
nues of an abbey of which he was su- 
perior ; but whether the forfeiture arose 
from his attachment to popety, or the 
yellow-haired companion, oral history 
has preserved no record. 

Near this retreat stands a small orato- 
ry or cell, furnished with a ruined altar, 
and some curiously carvedheads of saints; 
while several fragments of rude sculp- 
tureand entablatures, with mottoes in 
Latin or Spanish, lie scattered around 
it. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 125 

In the traditional history of the baro- 
ny, L * * *d holds a distinguished place. 
The castle, erected and long possessed 
by the O'Dowels, one of the most pow- 
erful families in Connaught, was besieg 
ed and taken by the clan of the Mac 
Swines ; whose descendants in the reign 
of Elizabeth made it over, for a certain 
sum of money, with all the circumjacent 
lands, to Edward Crofton, an officer in 
Essex's army, and afterwards escheator- 
general of Ireland. That the lands of 
L* * *(j vvere neither won by arms, nor 
seized on by licensed violence, from the 
original proprietors, is a circumstance 
well known to the neighbouring peasan- 
try : one of them said to me, '^ L***d 
estate is not a debenture,'' which is a 
term applied to those properties made o- 
ver by Cromwell to his soldiers : and 
the liberality of the escheator-general has 
added a kind of reverence to the affecti- 
on and respect which his lineal descen- 
dant has awakened in the hearts of his 
tenants, dependants, and followers * 
l2 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 126 

* This term will only be understood in Ire- 
land, where the " followers of the family" claim 
and receive the right of patronage, and too of- 
ten of support and maintenance ; it is a lin- 
gering custom of feudal times, which in many 
instances would be " more honoured in the 
breach than the observance.'* 



END OF VOLUME 1 



PATRIOTIC 

SKETCHES 



OF 



IRELAND 



WRITTEN IN CONNAUGHT 



BY MISS OTVEJVSOjV, 



VOLUME SECOND> 



BALTIMORE : 



PRINTED FOR GEO. DOBBIN & MURPHY AND 
CALLENDER. & WILLS. 



Geo. Dobbin & Murphy, Printers » 

1809. 



PATRIOTIC 

SKETCHES. 

Sfc. 



SKETCH XIII 



ALTHOUGH the sun was hastening 
to his goal, pursued by gloomy masses of 
dark red clouds, that seemed ^' porten- 
tous of a storm,^' we were tempted a few 
evenings back to take a short ramble, 
which amply repaid us for the risk we 
voluntarily encountered. 

The threatened inclemency, however, 
passed away in a few heavy drops : the 
air was soft and oppressive, and its tran 



ISO PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

quillity was only disturbed at distant in- 
tervals by sudden gusts of wind, which 
increased the dashing of the waves against 
the bar. 

The mountains on the other side of 
the bay were veiled in deep blue mists, 
while the summits of those we approach- 
ed were brightened by the slanting sun- 
beam, which shot its sacred light from 
the watery clouds on which it seemed to 
repose. As we proceeded through a deep- 
entangled dell, I was struck by the forci- 
ble contrast presented to my eye, by two 
cabins, which lay close to each other ; 
the one wretched and ruinous, was rais- 
ed with mud, and thatched with sods ; 
the other well built, and almost pictu- 
resque in its appearance, displayed all 
the neat comforts of an English cottage. 
Mr. **** offered to account for the dis 
parity; but observing a decent look- 
ing old man seated at the door of the bet- 
ter residence, he added, " Here is one, 
an old tenant and workman of my fa- 
ther's, whose information on the subject 
will be more grateful to you than mine 



PTEIOTIC SKETCHES. 131 

can possibly be.'^ The old man now ap- 
proached us, and with that courtesy which 
invariably distinguishes the manners of 
the peasantry of this country, he request- 
ed us to walk in and rest ourselves, ad- 
ding, the cow had just been milked, if 
we would condescend to take a draught 
of new milk. 

W^e found within the cabin his-old dame 
seated at her wheel, and a young girl 
busied at some flax. She was pretty, 
and on enquiry I found she was not their 
daughter, but a little orphan they had a- 
dopted. " Poor thing, said the old man, 
looking affectionately at her, she has got 
a disorder in her arm, which is wasting 
her away sadly. '^ Mr. **** advised him 
to take her to an hospital in the neigh- 
bourhood, " God bless her," returned 
the old man, " I would take her all over 
the world, if it would do her any good ;" 
and yet he had a family of his own, and 
the little orphan had no other claim on his 
kindness than that of standing in need 
of it. 



132 PATRIOTIC SKinXHti^. 

I now inquired into the cause of thai 
evident disjjarity of circumstance? which 
apparently existed between him and his 
neighbour, and was glad to hear that the 
ruinous cabin was uninhabited. ** That 
miserable hut,** said he. *•' was my own 
poor home for twelve jears ; for, never 
being able to get a lease from the gentle- 
man who stood between me and the head 
landlord, his honour's father there, Chri si 
bless him, my heart failed me, as to do- 
ing any thing in the \i ay of improvement: 
knowing that if I did, my poor boys might 
be turned out, and a stranger come' and 
reap the fruits of our labour : so I went 
plodding on from year to year- heartless 
enough, taking an acre here to-day. and 
there to-morrow, to sow our potatoes 
and flax in. But no sooner had the lands 
got back into his honour's hands, my 
blessing light on him. than he gave us 
a lease that will stand good for my chil- 
dren and my children's children ; and 
then our spirits got op. and we worked 
night and day. and improved this little 
farm, and built this comfortable cabin. 



PaTEIOTIC SKiTCHi:*. lo3 

which it is 'worth while to keep neat and 
clean ; and though I never saw twenty 
guineas of my own together in all my 
life, there is not a happier man in the ba- 
rony for an that.^ 

Thi-; little detail -bed another Tiy : 
li^ht upon those pc»palar discontTr.:? 
which have so long agitated this conn 07'. 
and which have been invariably anribirt 
ed to an inimicality on the pan of the I- 
ri=h peasant to the British government 

: ^ "pyhold lease is onknown in Ire- 
.:A neither the eqmty nor the 
heart of the middle-man acknowledges 
those claims which the affection ef the 
child makes on the little spot dear to the 
earliest feehngs ot his sool. and reclaim- 
ed and cultivated by the hands of his fa- 
ther. 

We now proceeded along a narrow 
and neglected path, partially shaded by 
a thicket, and which gradoaDy woond 
np the lwt>w of a ragged hiD. whose snm- 



lo4< PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

mit was crowned with the ruins and ce- 
metery of the abbey of Druniard. As 
the abbey had received a particular be- 
nediction from one of the popes, it is still 
looked on as a kind of passport to salva- 
tion, by the neighbouring peasantry, to 
be buried in its consecrated ground; and 
many a snowy garland, and flowery 
wreath, identihed the '^ nairow house" 
of some recently lost, or tenderly lament- 
ed object. The gloom of evening was 
thickening ; from the eminence where 
we stood, the sea, dark and turbulent, 
was heard to roar. I sat down on a tomb 
among the ruins of the abbey; and the 
tone of my mind, though mournful, was 
not ungracious to my fancy or my feel- 
ings. At that moment a young peasant 
entered the cemetery, and having chas- 
ed away a mule who was grazing on its 
skirts, he took off his hat, and approach- 
ing Mr. *** with a melancholy air, said, 
<^ that he had followed his honour, in the 
hope of relieving his heart of a great 
weight, for that it was nigh to break 
when he beheld the beasts of the field 
disturbing the remains of hi< poor father 



PATKIOTIC SKETCHES. 1S5 

and mother, owing to the fences of the 
burial-ground being all removed or bro- 
ken down, so that at last the whole 
church-yard would become pasture; and 
all this/' added he, " for want, an please 
your honour, of mending that ruined wall 
which served as a parting between it and 
the parson's lands. For my own part, 
I would rather fast for a week, and give 
up my labour towards rebuilding the 
wall, than to see the remains of my poor 
parents disturbed by mules, and horses, 
and pigs ; and if your honour will but 
allow me to take stones and sand from 
your honour's quarry, I will engage to 
build up the wall myself in three days, 
without either assistance or reward." — 
This disinterested request was instantly 
complied with, and with blessings on his 
tongue, and satisfaction in his eyes, the 
young peasant departed ; stooping to 
pluck away a thistle from the grave of 
his parents as he passed it,* with a look 

* I afterwards leamt that he had actually car- 
ried the stones on his back from a considerable 
distance, with which he had built up the walls 
of the cemetery. 



1S6 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

full of self-satisfaction, and delighted to 
make a temporary resignation of the 
means of livelihood, by which be should 
secure the ashes of his departed parents 
from violation. 

The affectionate regard which the Irish 
peasant feels for the memory of those 
dear to him in life, is indeed romantic, 
and almost incredible. ^^ Here," said 
Mr. ****^ pointing to a tomb-stone — 
*^ here is a curious instance of the love 
of posthumous honours prevailing among 
the lower orders of this country. The 
person whose death, &c. &c. this grave- 
stone is to relate, superintended the car- 
riage of it here to-day himself, and ac- 
tually chose the spot where he wished 
to be interred. He was a poor farmer in 
delicate health ; and probably purchased 
the means of perpetuating his memory 
after death, by the denial of many com- 
forts requisite to the prolongation of his 
life." 

This circumstance brought mutually 
to our remembrance many anecdotes il 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 187 

lustrative of the predominant passion of 
the lower Irish, to hold an endeared im- 
mortality in the hearts of their surviv- 
ing friends. In the poems of Ossian ma- 
ny allusions are made to this so ignoble 
propensity ; and the bard who anxious- 
ly exclaims, " Oh! lay me near my favo- 
rite hills, ye that see the light,'' &c. &c. 
seems to have been animated by the same 
desire as the peasant of the present day, 
who w^atches with anxiety the progress 
of his tomb, and marks the spot which 
is to receive his ashes. 

Not many months back, a labouring 
man was tried in an assize-town in this 
province, and condemned to die; but be- 
traying a hardened insensibility to his 
fate, even while sentence was passing 
on him, the judge endeavoured to awa- 
ken some ^^ compunctious visitings of 
conscience" in his unrepenting breast, 
by declaring that he should suffer in for- 
ty-eight hours. ^^ Forty- eight hours !" 
reiterated the condemned with a smile of 
contempt; " in forty eight minutes if yon 
m2 



138 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

will, so that my body is but given to my 
people.^' 

It is a circumstance well known in the 
neighbourhood of Tereragh, that during 
the late rebellion a man was tried and 
condemned for disaffection, to whom it 
was offered to have his sentence of death 
changed into transportation;, if he would 
make some discoveries. After some con- 
sultation, however, with his wife and fa- 
mily, he sent for the officer of the guard, 
and told him he was ready for executi- 
on. ^' We must all die, please your ho- 
nour,'' said he calmly, " sooner or la- 
ter ; for my part, thank God ! I am sure 
of dying in the midst of my people — 
Many a tear will be dropt, and many a 
song sung over me, and my children's 
children will talk of my wake and my 
funeral. But if I go into foreign parts, 
though I save my life for a time, 1 must 
die at last; and die among strangers^, 
without one friend to close my eyes, or 
to watch the morning light shining for 
the first time on my corpse." His wife, 
who was present, wept; but confirmed 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 139 

him in his resolution, and the next day 
he was executed. 

A passion for enjoying a twofold exis 
tence, independent of actual being ; of 
tracing back genealogical honours, and 
anticipating a perpetuated life in the 
hearts of those they leave behind ; is a 
passion incidental to the native Irish cha- 
racter of every rank ; and though in the 
world's language it may be deemed a ro- 
mantic passion, yet romance, like hero- 
ism, is never the national trait of a cor- 
rupt or base people : it may be found in 
the character of an Aristides ; it may be 
traced in the conduct of a Scevola, but 
it will not be easily discovered in the 
slaves of modern Greece, or found in the 
natives of modern Rome. 

The last rays of the setting sun had 
withdrawn their glow from the ruins of 
Drumard, and were succeeded by a clear 
twilight, animated by the brightness of a 
rising moon. W^e were on the point of 
returning to L*** house, which was ht- 
tle more than half a mile distp^nt across a 



140 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES; 

ijeld-patb, when a partial view of a holy 
well caught as we descended the brow of 
the hill, and tempted us to a little pilgri- 
mage aside, for it lay almost in our way 
to L*** house. We directed our steps 
therefore to a glen, through which a 
stream meandered its irregular way, o- 
verarude bed of rock, whic"^ produced an 
incessant murmur in its impeded course. 
A little circular spot sacred to religious 
gloom, and shaded with sycamores and 
elms, terminated the glen : its entrance 
was constructed of a rude arch, and the 
flag which formed its threshold was 
thrown over the stream, which had doubt- 
less been the rubicon of faith to many 
an all-believing soul. In the centre of 
this consecrated spot stood around stone 
bath, which received its tributary waters 
from the adjoining sacred spring ; which 
was simply covered with a broad fiat 
stone, raised over it longitudinally. A 
path was traced round the holy well, 
which seemed to have been '' worn by 
holy knees," and a small bowl suspend- 
ed over it by a chain, many a holy lip 
had doubtless pressed, and haply fancied 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 1 11 

that it quaflfed salvation with a draught. 
At some little distance from the bath and 
well stood a simple altar, enriched with 
stones, and shaded by a spreading oak, 
from whose trunk was hung a wooden 
crucifix, and on whose branches were 
thrown the votive offerings of those 
whose " faith had made them whole," 
while the names of the pious convales- 
cents were carved on its bark. 

Religion, in her deepest mood of so- 
lemn meditation, couid not have chosen 
a spot more congenial to the indulgence 
of her spiritual abstraction. The gloo- 
my sequestration of the place, the purpo- 
ses to which it was devoted, the rude 
simplicity of its aspect, the sweet solem- 
nity of the hour, the oppressive softness 
of the atmosphere, and the stilly sounds 
that breathed on the silence of the even- 
ing, gave a combined and touching inte- 
rest to the scene ; and if I were to judge 
by my own feelings, it required no pre- 
disposition to fanaticism, to resign, in 
such a spot and in such an hour, the soul 
to the influence of sacred emotion, and 



142 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

by a " soft transition mingle with the 
skies/' 

Such a temple as this must ever be ac- 
cordant to the simplicity of primitive re- 
ligion, where heaven forms the canopy, 
and nature furnishes the altar ; where 
all inspires enthusiasm, unaccompanied 
by the fury of sect, and all breathe the 
ardour of devotion, unalloyed by that ve- 
nality to which devotion is so frequent-, 
ly prey ; when credulous vice hopes to 
*' bribe the wrath of ill-requited heaven," 
and pious Fraud affects to cancel the sin, 
and laughs while he profits by the folly 
of the sinner. 

Superstition is the religion of weak 
minds ; but the surperstition which t^ 
simple, the romantic solemnity of this 
little spot awakened, was the orthodox 
of the fancy and the heart. 

I left it with regret ; and we again found 
ourselves in the gloomy little glen ; the 
sea-breeze rushed sharply through it, 
and our approach to the shore was mark- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 143 

ed by the change of atmosphere, which 
was now sharp and cold ; and we were 
luxuriating in the idea of a warm draw- 
ing-room and good fire, when a shivering 
little girl appeared driving a sorry horse, 
laden with turf, in tjie narrow^ and almost 
impassible defile which we were strug- 
gling through ; she did not appear above 
ten years old, and was literally half-nak- 
ed. 

With the idle curiosities incident to 
ramblers, we asked her some questions, 
which she answered in Irish ; and we 
learnt that she was the eldest child of a 
poor widow, who lived on the other side 
of the hill we had descended ; she was 
the only one of four children able to work, 
^' and was then," she said, *' returning 
home after getting some turf off Law- 
rence Hogan's bog, Patrick Flanagan 
having lent his horse out of charity to 
draw it.'^ '' And Mr. Lawrence Ho- 
gan," said Mr. ***, ^^ is liable to a pe- 
nalty for giving turf in this manner off 
the bog ; and Mr. Patrick Flanagan has 
been idle all davfor the want of his horse; 



144 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 

but one half of the poor of this country 
would perish were it not for the benevo- 
lence and brotherly assistance of the o- 
ther." The little shivering girl curtsey- 
edj and passed on towards the mountain. 
How few are the hardships to which the 
females of this country are not innured 
from their infancy ! 

By the time we had reached the old a- 
venue of L*** house, the moon rode 
high, and darted her beams through the 
foliage of the trees that canopied our 
heads, while opposed to her cold but 
brilliant light the deep red blaze of a turf 
fire gleamed through the ^^ loop-hole" of 
a neighbouring cabin. The song which 
caught our car as we passed the door in- 
duced us to enter. It was the song of an 
itinerant taylor ; he was seated in the 
centre of the earthen floor, working by 
the light of a rush, and surrounded by a 
group of children, who were hanging de 
lightedly on his song ; and watching with 
eagerness the progress of the little frieze 
jackets, spun by their mother, and now 
in the hands of the musical taylor, while 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 115 

their parents, released from the labours 
of hire, were working by the light of 
the moon in their little garden; and their 
eldest brother, submitting to the influ- 
ence of inordinate fatigue, lay stretched 
on some straw in a corner of the ca- 
bin, the head of a calf actually reposing 
on his arm, and the parent cow quietly 
slumbering at his feet. A more striking 
picture of the interior of an Irish cabin 
could not be given. 

Notwithstanding a certain quaint hu- 
mour in the wandering taylor, who en- 
tered with some degree of droll freedom 
into conversation with us, and the beau- 
ty of the children strikingly apparent 
even in their ragged attire, the clouds 
of smoke which thickened round us drove 
us almost immediately away. 



146 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 



SKETCH XIII. 



There are not only picturesque forms, 
picturesque scenes, and picturesque 
sounds, on which the fancy loves to dwell; 
but even the weather has its picturesque 
beauty, and every season of the day "its 
charm peculiar :" which to a poetic ima- 
gination never looses a certain interest, 
and communicates to every object some- 
thing of its own character. Thus while 
the genius of a Lorraine basked in the 
red rich beams of a declining sun, the 
fancy of a Salvator wooed the gloomy 
shadows of the midnight storms. Thus 
the East's chill blasts, or South's soft 
breeze, the thunder's prelusive cloud, or 
day's meridian ray, communicates to the 
human frame a sensation correspondent 



PATKICrriC SKETCHES. 147 

to their effects ; which reacting on the 
feeling and the mind, submits to the in- 
fluence of material causes, the essence 
of the immaterial being.. 

" So the glad impulse of congenial powers, 
Or of sweet sound, or fair-proportion'd form. 
The grace of motion, or the bloom of lights 
Thrills through imagination's tender frame : 
From nerve to nerve, all naked and alive, 
They catch the spreading ray till now the soul 
At length discloses every tuneful spring 
To that harmonious movement from without 
Responsive." 

Human knowledge has its source in 
human wants ; and he who first made 
meteorology his study, was perhaps like 
me, dependant on the vicissitudes of the 
weather for his occupation and his plea- 
sures. 

A ramble among some line mountain 
scenery having been proposed, we left 
L*** house early in the morning on our 
pedestrian tour ; although the apparent 
ly doubtful temper of the day almost held 



148 PATKIOTiC SKETCHES. 

determination in suspense, while it pos- 
sessed the same degree of fascination as 
the dotage of iove is apt to discover in 
the half-pouting, half-smihng caprice of a 
whimsical mistress. The mellowed tone 
of spirits under which my last Sketch 
was drawn, when the soft gloom of an 
autumnal evening hung its pensive sha- 
dows round me, was now^, by the sweet- 
ness of an autumnal morning, animiited 
into that flow of animal and intellectual 
vivacity which flings on the opening 
scenes of nature a prismatic hue, 

" And before us turns 
The gayest, happiest attitude of things. 

As we emerged from the venerable a- 
venue, the elevation of the road into 
which w^e advanced gave to our glance a 
full view of the ocean; its bosom smooth 
and unruflied sparkled to the radiance of 
an almost vertical sun ; while the bar re- 
sisting the tide's swelling ebb, flung back 
the stealing wave in snowy breakers. 
High above our winding path the Ox- 
mountains arose like an amphitheatre, 



PA'rRlOTIC SKETCHES. 149 

and spreading their undulating line to- 
wards the County of Letrim, lost their 
distant summits in the golden clouds that 
reposed on them, while on the opposite 
shore the solitary majesty of Knock-na- 
ree settled its lofty brow. 

As we paused to contemplate a scene 
rich in some of the finest features of the 
picturesque sublime, a young peasant 
approached us: he seemed like the here- 
ditary bards of his country, " formed in 
the prodigahty of nature;" and though 
''■ he whistled as he went/' if the intelli- 
gence of his countenance was to be cre- 
dited, it was not " for want of thought.'' 
This," said Mr.***, who accompanied 
us, "is an apropos recontre ; for this is 
the young fellow I mentioned to you, 
who has obtained so much celebrity a- 
mong his rustic friends for singing the 
songs of Ossian ; and in fact, after a few 
words of conversation with him, we dis- 
covered he was on his way to attend a 
wake seven miles for that purpose. Mr. 
*** asked him if he would come and 
N 2' 



150 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

sing the songs of Ossian for us at L*** 
house ; he repUed^ with a bow and a 
blush ^^ that he did not think he could, 
not being used to sing before such com- 
pany;" adding, that *Mie was sure he 
could •AOt make himself understood in 
English, as the songs were in such fine 
old cramp Irish, that few (save the old 
people) could understand them; and that 
though he felt all he sung, he could not 
hijnself explain it, so as to hit his fancy. '^ 
In a word he gave us to understand, that 
the songs had descended orally in the 
pure ancient Irish, which, like every 
other polished language, had its classical 
and vulgar dialects. 

At my particular instance, the young 
story-teller (for so he was named) re- 
peated some stanzas from Ossian in a 
species of recitative not unmusical : it 
was an account of Fingal's combat with 
the Danish monarch; and while he recit- 
ed the combat with some degree of epic 
fire, he pointed to a mountain sacred to 
some of the feats of his hero, and thus 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 151 

gave a superadded interest to his ^' song 
of other times." 



It is now T believe generally allowed 
by those whose attention has been fasci- 
nated by the subject, that the Ossianic 
poems are not more ancient than the ele- 
venth and twelfth centuries ; as many of 
the terms of language found in them 
must have been unknown to the early I- 
rish: they are even now given in an al- 
most obsolete dialect, though still in that 
short measure which was formerly sung 
to the harp by the Irish lyrists. 

The pertinacity with which the Irish 
adhere to their ancient customs and man- 
ners, in almost every instance, is strong- 
ly illustrated in this; our young story-tel- 
ler being in fact a representative of a 
certain order of *^ bardis," of whom 
Spenser gives so ^curious an account. — 
Speaking of the higher order of min- 
strels he says,* " their verses were ta- 
ken up with general applause, and sung 



* Vol. vi. small edition. 



152 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

at all feasts and meetings, by certain o- 
ther persons whose function that is, and 
who receive for the same great rewards 
and reputation among them." * In a la- 
ter period however, this musique ambu- 
Xante seems to have declined in its influ- 
ence, as did its professors in respectabi- 
lity ; for we find one of them thus descri- 
bed by Sir William Temple : '' A very 
gallant gentleman of the north of Eng- 
land," says he, '^ has toM me of his own 
experience, that in his wolf-huntings 



* " The Scotch, Welsh, and Irish, though 
the countries they inhabit have been much sub- 
ject both to foreign aggression and intestine 
wars, yet contain more of their aboriginal in- 
habitants, and are at this day a less mixed race 
than the English. They have stiJl in some 
measure retained .in popular use their peculiar 
dialects, handed down to them from remote 
ages. They converse in their own language 
with a conscious delight, and have preserved 
many of their ancient customs, institutions, tra- 
ditions, and pastimes, and also many of their 
metrical compositions.'*— Pres^ow no the OrU 
gin and Progress of the Fine Asts. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 153 

ihere^, when he used to be abroad in the 
mountains three or four days together, 
and lay very ill at nights, so that he could 
not sleep, they would bring him one of 
the tale-tellers ; that when he lay down 
would begin a story of a king, or a giant, 
or a dwarf, or a damsel, or such ram- 
bling stuff, and continue it all night long, 
in such an even tone, that you heard it 
going on whenever you awakened." 

Mr. Walker traces the origin of ro- 
mantic fabling in Ireland to an Orien- 
tal source ; not however through so re- 
mote a medium as the Milesian settlers 
in this country, but through those catho- 
lic missionaries deputed occasionally 
from Rome to regulate the ritual, and who 
probably introduced among their sup- 
plies of holy legends, many profane ro- 
mances, the wild off-spring of visionary 
fancies and monastic indolence ; and as 
the brilliant fictions of the East were the 
elements of which these romances were 
composed, ^^ they thus,'' Mr. Walker as- 
serts, ^*^ obtained a footing in Ireland, and 



154 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

rurnished materials for the metrical talcs 
of our early bards. '^ 

1 have however met with some ancient 
Irish compositions which did not wear 
the character of Oriental poetry, and 
certainly rose far beyond the " rambling 
stuff" alluded to by Temple. I shall se- 
lect a translation of one as an instance. 

Scene, near Qalway. 

" Now sleeps the breeze of night on the 
moon-shattered wave, and the kindling 
azure of rosy morn invites my steps to 
the ocean's brim ; its murmer sooths my 
care ; a ship at a distance (stately as a 
swan on the rising surge) salutes my eye ; 
the swelling sail courts the passing air ; 
quickly she reaches the pebbled shore ; 
her lading precious holds the attentive 
sight captive ; the richest silks of Greece 
in folds loose floating rise, or sinking 
beam each various die that woofs the 
fluid bow ; while precious stones that 
thirsty-seeming drink the light gleam 
brightly round. But soon my wandering 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 155 

soul is fixed on one fair object issuing 
from the bark, milder than day decend- 
ing on the plain ; behind her flows a train 
of snowy virgins, in movements gentle 
and in air divine ; but she that train out- 
shines as Hesper does his twinkling host, 
while her untainted mind beams through 
her form, diifusing smiles that soften e- 
very thought, and tune to sighs of love 
each passing gale ; her wavy locks in 
parting radiance fall adown her lessening 
waist, while shining rings of happy gold 
embrace her snowy neck ; the infant 
blushes of the dewy rose light kiss her 
cheek ; her scarcely parting lip delays 
the milky dawn. Now various thoughts 
of conteftiplation rise — AVhat can the er- 
rand of this angel mean ? for nothing 
less I deemed the beautious form of Peg- 
gy Deane. O fairest star of beauty's 
spreading sky ! O beautious swan, that 
swelling on the sight dissolves in luxury 
the sinking soul ! O beautious nymph 
with teeth of polished snow! O sweetest 
branch of an illustrious race, whose 
deeds have often swelled the eternal 
song, and fed the poet's flame ! O voice 



156 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

of love, whose melting tones new accents 
to the listening harp impart! at thy dear 
presence the sun enfeebled grows, his 
beams soft sinking shew thy flowing hair 
that richer glows than his. Thrice hap- 
py man ! oh, happiest he of men, who dares 
thy presence sott approach, hang on thy 
look, meit at thy touch, or waste his soul 
for thee in sighs ! O too enchanting look, 
that early spreads its soft persuasion o'er 
my heart, that dimed mine eyes, and 
won me first to verse ; much fairer than 
Cassandra's form, than Helen of the win- 
ning mein, or Dian chaste, or Graina, 
soft-eyed maid,* or Deirdra mild, that 
with her lover Naoise fled to Alban's 
shore from Ulster's king, her spouse 
whose beauty, hapless fate, and lawless 
flame, have often swelled the poet's reed! 
Yes, thou art fairer far than she; and 
yet thy glowing charms await unsung : 
in vain the lily offers for thy neck, the 
rose-bud for thy cheek, or blossoms for 
thy hair. Thy waist is gentler then the 



* A celebrated Irish beauty and heroine in 
the reign of Elizabeth. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 157 

weasel's, and thy song's melody would 
chase the stroke of death ; my heart in- 
cessant bleeds from womids thine eyes 
have made ! I feel my soul dissolve in 
sighs, and I am shrunk like flowers that 
mourn the absence of the sun. I'm like 
the solitary fowl on evening's purple 
wave ; thy breath alone can warm me, 
for thy breath is sweeter than the breath 
of morn. In vain I fly, still thou persu- 
est: in solitude I meet thy presence, and 
in a crowd I am alone: imagination loves 
to dwell upon thee ; thy hair long and 
spreading is drawn from love's own net; 
the rose and lily still dispute thy cheek ; 
thy accent soft fades like the accent of 
the melting string ; and thine eye's beam 
-oh ! happy he who flies that beam, yet 
hapless he! !!" 

We had scarcely taken leave of our 
young story-teller, whose accidental ren- 
contre has led me into this digression, 
vv^hen a sudden shower obliged us to seek 
shelter in a cabin near the shore ; though 
Vtttle better than a mud built hut. it was 
o 



158 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

singularly clean, and we found its mis» 
tress (an elderly dame) busied in prepar- 
ing dinner for her sons, who were at 
work. The feast consisted of some pota- 
toes and milk, of which we were courte- 
ously solicited to partake. In the course 
of some little chit-chat, she took occa- 
sion to complain to Mr.**** of the op- 
pression she suffered from her landlord ; 
and having mentioned the exorbitant 
rent she paid for her cabin, added with a 
look and a manner I shall never forget : 
"Surely it is too much to pay for a shed 
io break one^s heai^t under T^ So energe- 
tic, so expressive is the Irish language, 
that those of the lower order, who bor- 
row the idiom of their English from that 
of their native tongue, frequently say 
more in a single sentence than volumes 
could express.* "Your absence is ever 
present to me ; " " the light of heaven 
has taken shelter in your eye ;'^ " pulse 

*" The Irish tongue is sharp and sententi- 
ous," says Stuinhurst, " and offereth great occa- 
sions to quick apothcgnis and proper allusions.'' 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 159 

of my beating heart;" and many other 
equally tender expressions of endear- 
ment, I have heard them frequently use 
to each other; and indeed, were Love to 
draw up a nomenclature of his own tech- 
nical phrases, the Irish language would 
perhaps contribute more largely to the 
undertaking then any other whatever. 



160 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 



SKETCH XIV. 



A§ novelty affords to the senses and 
the mind one of the liveliest gratificati 
ons of which either is susceptible, that 
system w^hich still retains its gloss, that 
mode which still preserves its sanction, 
whether founded in truth or originating 
in error, still holds its patent from the 
passions of mankind, and is neither to be 
opposed with effect, nor resisted with 
success, till the acumen of experience 
has detected its fallacy, or till it becomes 
uninteresting by becoming stale ; while 
that which has for its best recommenda- 
tion the charm of novelty only, must owe 
the sanction of universal adoption to the 
same variable and fluttering power to 
which it stood indebted for its first intro- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 161 

duction. Whether the ^^ new light" in 
farming so eagerly embraced in many 
parts of Ireland, owes its influence to its 
novelty or to its intrinsic excellence, it is 
for those to judge who can form their es- 
timate from experienced proof. But how 
far this country has been benefited mo- 
rally, politically or physically, by the in- 
creased weight of it sirloins, the additi- 
onal rotundity of its hogs, or the delicate 
ossific construction of its sheep, is a cir- 
cumstance of which I candidly plead the 
most perfect ignorance. 

But while the silver vase or golden me- 
dal shines at the board, or glitters at the 
breast of him who has enriched his coun- 
try with the fattest bullock, or ennobled 
it with the largest hog, is there no prize 
for him whose heart, swelling indignant 
at the obvious degradation of his hum- 
ble compatriot brethren, exerts the best 
energies of his being to raise them in the 
scale of human nature and national in- 
interest? for him who indignantly be- 
holding that 
o2 



162 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

'< Man's the only growth that withers here,** 

boldly comes forward as the champion 
of those, from whose minds even habit- 
ual wretchedness has not obliterated 
the noblest traces of humanity ; who en- 
deavours to extend towards them the 
means of labour, and consequently of 
subsistence ; who adequately rewards 
their exertions, and voluntarily lends his 
individual efforts to that redress of long 
and existing grievance which can alone 
chase the scowl of latent insurrection 
from the close-knit brow of popular feel- 
ing, and awaken the cheery smile of 
heartfelt contentment in the downcast 
eye of habitual despondency. 

1 am told that many characters of high 
vespectabillity, and some political influ- 
ence in this country, undisturbed by nati- 
onal conflict, unambitious of legislative 
power, devote all their faculties to the im- 
provement of such implements of hus- 
bandry as may eventually annihilate the 
necessity of all manual labour, and like 
the flying chase of Bacon, or the magic 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 163 

cap of Fortunatas, execute the intention 
of their possessors without the trouble- 
some intervention of human aid or a- 
nimal assistance ;* that others, distin- 
guished by their elevated rank in socie- 
ty, meekly devote themselves to the bi- 
enseance of a piggery, and endeavour 
to regulate the " petits morales^^ of its 
occupants by the new light of agricult- 



* In a country swarming with population, 
chiefly devoted to pasturage, and inhabited by 
a bold, active, and restless peasantry, the good 
policy of torfiiring mp.rlianicg:^ sl^ill to devise 
nev/ modes of lessening the neci^sity of human 
labour, is not very clear to nlfHids who are apt 
to judge of causes by their effects, and to esti- 
mate an invention rather by its utility than its 
ingenuity. — " Le public ne prendjamtisconseil 
que de son interet, £c ne proportionne point son 
estime pour les differens genres de I'e sprit a 
I'inegale difficulte de ces genres, c'st-a-dire au- 
nombre Sc a la finesse des idees U^^cessaire ; pout 
y reussir, mais seulement a Tavantage jplus ou 
monis grand qu'il en retire."— Z>e l*£sjirit,/iar 
Rafi^iort au Public, c. 12, p, ^9. 



164 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

ral philosophy;* and that many who u- 
nite opulence to rank, emulate the pro- 
pensities and avocations of their own 
blacksmith, and on the splendid domains 
of their ancestors preside over the sale 
of newly-invented harrows and patent 
ploughs, t 

But while the regimen of cattle has 
become an object of fashionabh* attenti- 
on, who, by an adequate reward of in- 
dustry, 

" Grants a bliss at labour's earnest call," 



■M 



*An Irish gentleman distinguished by his 
farming enthusiasm, invented a trough of pecu- 
liar construction, to induce tlie pigs to eat with 
proprete i failing in the attempt, I heard him 
seriously declare that there was a radical prin- 
ciple of filth in the animal, which neither care 
nor education could vanquish, 

t Attendant on these vast machines, and at- 
tached to the farms of these patrician farmers, 
a number of English hinds, imported to super- 
intend the farms, are to be seen, who, well 
4ressed, well fed,^ and well paid, insult by their 



f' 



l^ATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 165 

and adds to the potatoe and salt of his 
peasant the luxury of one of the turnips 
sown for his sheep ? While some degree 
of elegance is betrayed in the construc- 
tion of a bullock-s-tall or a pig-stye, who 
raises the walls or secures the roof of 
the miserable cabin, which, covered with 
a few turf sods, subjects its shivering in- 
habitants to all '' the penalties of Adam, 
the seasons' changes ?^' While vehicles 
of comfort and of ease are provided to 
convey the pampered animal from the 
soil that nourishes it, to the market where 
it is to enrich its owner's purse, who feels 
for those whose wretched drapery de- 
fends not the form it scarcely covers 
from the weather's inclemency, for 
those whose torn and perished feet so of- 
ten track the winter's snows with their 
naked pressure? 

It is in vain to assert that by the po- 
pulation of Ireland exceeding the neces- 
sity of human labour, the wretchedness 

presence the natives of the soil, and by contrast 
and comparison teach them to feel their own 
degraded state with keener susceptibility. 



166 PATEIOTIC SKETCHES. 

of the lower orders is become an inevi- 
table evil ; while immeasurable tracts of 
bog, whose reclaiming would aft'ord sub- 
sistence to many hundred families, are 
suffered to lie undrained, to impure and 
corrupt the climate, and to injure and 
deform the aspect of the country ;* while 



* The promotion of public good must ever 
in some degree flow back in an inverse ratio on 
those whose individual exertions have tended 
to that promotion j and I was so forcibly struck 
by the proprietors of bogs slumbering over the 
aggrandizement of their own properties, that I 
applied for a solution of the enigma to a gentle- 
man of considerable landed property and agri- 
cultural experience ; who replied, " that the 
preliminary step to render a bog productive was 
to drain it, which was best effected by subdivid- 
ing it into roads ; but that the inability of the 
small adjacent baronies to undertake so great 
a work was in general the chief obstacle. It 
was alone to be accomplished by becoming an 
object of general attention, by the unanimity 
and confederate efforts of a county at large to 
give presentments ; in a word, the influence 
and exeition of public spirit, blended with the 
individual principles of private interest." The 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 167 

those numerous rivers in which the is- 
land abounds, sharing that genev^V ne- 
glect of all public concerns, interwoven 
with the intrinsic and internal interest of 
the country, are suifered to overflow 
their banks to a vast extent ; whose time- 
ly confinement within their natural shoals 
would rescue many thousand acres of 
now unproductive land, from decided 
loss, and give employment to many thou- 
sand wretches, whom want of work and 
not want of principle drives to despera- 
tion. 

Incapable from my sex, my years, my 
inexperience, to judge how far the na- 
tural, political, or commercial state of 
my native countj-y admits of the intro- 
duction and establishment of manufac- 
tories ; it is yet impossible I should cast 
my eyes on those vast bogs which spread 
their savage plains till the horizon limits 



Dublin Society, I understand, give premiums 
for crops oif bogs, for the obt linment of which 
a few partial efforts by certain individuals are 
made ; but if the premiums were offered for 



168 PATRIOTIC SKKTCHEb. 

their extent to the strained eye ;* it i& 
impossible I should behold those nume- 
rous and noble rivers whose too abun- 
dant waters covert the most naturally 



the draining of bogs, would or would not the 
effects be more general, and more extensive- 
ly beneficial ? 

* The partial reclamation to be seen on the 
skirts of some bogs, testifies the latent capabili- 
ties of the whole. Speaking of a bog at Word- 
lawn, the seat of Lord Ashtown, and of the 
proprietor's mode of improving it, Mr. Young 
in his travels through Ireland asserts, that the 
bog in its original state was " like a bed of 
;tow,'* unable to sustain the pressure of a 
horse's foot, from the lightness of its substance, 
and so wet that the drains could not be at first 
cut deeper than four feet ; yet he adds, that he 
afterwards saw it in such perfect improvement, 
that its hay was fine, its herbage good, and it 
carried the complete appearance of a meadow, 
except in the drains, where the heath still ap- 
peared. 

t This perhaps would be most effectually 
obviated by the interference of the legislature, 
obliging the proprietors of the circumjacent 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 159 

luxurious soil, without a conviction strik 
ing my heart, that, in the remedy of 
those natural but injurious defects, lurk 
employment for the industrious, compe- 
tency for the impoverished, riches for 
the individual, and beauty, health, and 
prosperity, for the country in general. 

Oh ! surely it requires no new light to 
discover that the happiness of a people 
constitutes the prosperity of a nation ; 
that neither the improved beauty of her 
animals, nor the partial luxuriancy of her 
soil, can secure her internal felicity, or 
add lustre to her reputation, .while cir- 
cumstances of a peculiar but not evitable 
nature repress the energy and limit the 



lands 10 contribute to a work of such private 
and public utility, according to their respec- 
tive tenures. The idea, however, is the sug- 
gestion of an inexperienced mind, guided by 
the enthusiasm of its wishes, in every thing 
that concerns the good of that country where 
its first ideas were awakened into existence, 
and cradled amidst circumstances of national 
interest. 
p 



170 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

faculties of her children ; while pover 
ty sallows the check of her sons, and 
discontent sits lowering on their brows ; 
while the bold hand of religious distinc- 
tion flings its ice upon the ardent feelings 
of national confederacy ; and the bane- 
ful influence of party-spirit severs those 
hearts, whose unanimous coalition would 
form round the green shores of their na- 
tive island, a barrier impregnable to the 
force of foreign invasion, invulnerable 
to the arts of foreign seduction. To him 
then whose every energy tends to the 
promotion of that great object be the 
prize of national honour adjudged ; round 
his heart whose strongest feeling is his 
country's good, be that medal suspend 
ed, which ,warm from the mint of natio 
nal gratitude, his country's hand pre 
sents. For such is the man to whom 
monarchs should decree their honours ; 
such is the man to whom nations should 
erect their statues. 



I^ATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 171 



SKETCH XV. 



THE precipice of Alt-bo is a shrine to 
which all the votaries of the '' terrible 
graces" of nature should bend their pii 
grim steps. 



No sloping upland lifting to the sun. 

Stone mountain this, desolate rock on rock i 

The burthen of the earth. 

From the window of my apartment at 
L##* house, the extreme point of Alt-bo 
incessantly caught my eye, and so fre- 
quently have I heard its wild and deso- 
late feamres exalted above the other na- 
tural sublimities of the neighbourhood, 
that unable to wait upon the tardy de- 



172 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

parture of damp and gloomy weather, J 
prevailed on the indulgent associates of 
many of my little rambles to accompa- 
ny me to this master-piece of magnifi- 
ent but savage natm-e. The morning 
was chill, light showers fell at intervals, 
and as the road which leads to Alt-bo is 
^o perilous and intricate as to be inacces- 
'-ible to any vehicle, we were obliged to 
perform our little pilgrimage on horse- 
back. As we proceeded, that bold ridge 
of mountain which towers above the nar- 
row plains of Tyrerah, spread its undu- 
lating lines to the left, blue with the mists 
of morning, and dashing from its clou- 
dy heights streams which the rain had 
swelled to torrents. To the right, the 
mountains of Donegal appeared like va- 
pours staining the horizon. The road 
narrow, devious, and sometimes almost 
impassable, frequently gave to our eyes 
the most wretched huts, whose half-nak- 
ed inhabitants the sound of our horses' 
feet occasionally brought to their doors, 
giving a moral finish, not to a scene of 
characteristic wiidness, but of comfort 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 173 

less desolation. The ocean at last ab- 
ruptly broke upon our view, and pre- 
sented the noblest, though certainly the 
wildest coast I had ever beheld; the 
rock-scenery and windings of the coast 
equally deiying the pencil or the pen to 
detail the featui'es they darina'ly betrav- 
ed. 

As we reached the shore, the tide was 
going out; yet as we crossed the sands 
beneath the umbrage of 

" Rocks inaccessible, 
And summits that tii-ed the eagle*s wing," 

the agitated ocean drove its mountainous 
billows back, as if to threaten destruc- 
tion on those who thus intruded on the 
boundaries of its awful and treacherous 
empire. Almost bathed by the spray of 
the tide, which opposing w^inds thus flung 
back, we took advantage of a defile worn 
through rocks by the incm'sion of the 
waves, with some difficulty ascended the 
precipitous heights., and at last gained 
p2 



174 PATRIOTIC SiiEtCiit^ 

the summit of those savage cliffs which 
a short time before we had strained our 
eyes to gaze at. 

We now continued, and with great 
difficulty, to follow the narrow path which 
was sometimes tracked along the edge 
of a precipice, sometimes wound through 
a desolated heath, and sometimes ran a- 
long the rocks which skirted the coast, 
until we at last reached the edge of a tor- 
rent which, flowing from the mountains 
that rose on our left, plunged into the 
ocean with a fathomless fall. Here, a- 
midst tlie acclivities of the rocks, ap- 
peared a few fishing huts, called in Irish 
•* the village of the cliffs ;" while among 
some boats drawn up from the shore, one 
of a better description was distinguished 
by the title of the admiral-boat, and be- 
longed to the chief or leader of this lit- 
tle piscatory colony. We obtained this 
intelligence from some young men, na- 
tives of the savage soil, and in their de- 
portment free as the winds that visited 
n It was Sunday, and they were amus- 



Patriotic sketches. 175 

ing themselves on the rocks ; then- feet 
and heads were uncovered, though the 
wind blew keenly from the ocean, and 
the warm and almost impregnable co- 
vering we had provided ourselves with, 
was unable to resist the occasional at- 
tacks of the '^ pitiless storm.'' 

They however seemed perfectly un 
conscious of its effects ; and their appa- 
rent insensibility to the ^^jar of elements," 
and their tall, robust, and hardy figures, 
were finely in point with the rude scene- 
ry around them ; while their civilized 
address, and evident courtesy, evinc- 
ed the little influence which mere situa- 
tion can produce on manners. They en- 
treated us to rest in their huts, offered 
to be our guides, and when we thank- 
fully refused their attention, promised 
to take care of our horses, which now 
ceased to be of any use to us. The im- 
mediate path to Alt-bo, by which we now 
proceeded, was indeed barely passable 
to the human foot: sometimes the marshy 
soil sunk beneath the pressure of our 



176 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

steps ; sometimes high momids of earth 
were to be surmounted, deep ditches got 
over, and not unfrequently the savage 
and irregular cliffs, darting abruptly in- 
to the ocean, rendered the head giddy 
while the timid and uncertain foot pursu- 
ed the track marked along their tower- 
ing summits. It was from the extreme 
points, and angular direction, of these 
cliffs, that we sometimes obtained a view 
of those immense grottoes, and yawning 
caverns, which vaulted their lofty heads, 
hung with sea-weed, and embossed with 
shells and maritime shrubs ; and where 
the pent up winds and incursive waves 
occasioned such an incessant war of e- 
lements, that fancy, resting her wan- 
dering eye upon the terrific excavations, 
might well consider them as the palladi- 
um of the spirit of the storms. Some 
scattered pieces of wreck floated near;* 
and at the entrance of one was anchor- 
ed a fishing-boat, which marked the ad- 



* The coast is reckoned fatal by mariners, 
and many vessels are frequently lost on it dur» 
ingthe winter season. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 177 

venturous spirit of him that dared to 
guide it to so perilous a mooring. 

Above the most awful of these caves^ 
and high over all its savage competitors, 
towers the cliff which bears the name of 
Alt-bo. With hesitating steps and daz- 
zled eyes we approached its highest point. 
The ocean roaring at its shelvy base, 
whichindeed seemed "fixed in the world's 
foundation/' spread before the eye in all 
the grandeur of infinitude ; while the 
mountain scenery of Tyrerah rose in full 
relief to the left, and to the right swelled 
the savage supimits of the Rosses, which 
skirted the opposite shores of Donegal, 
and the island of Innis-murry lifted its 
green head midway amidst the surround- 
ing waves. At some distance from Alt- 
bo, the abyss of Coraduu presents an 
object never to be viewed without an e- 
motion of terror ; and if the source of 
the true sublime consists in that which 
excites ideas of pain and danger, and o- 
perates on the mind in a manner analo- 
gous to terror, the sublimest object I 



178 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

have ever bejield is the abyss of Cora- 
dun. High and bold as the precipice of 
Alt-bo, its black and rocky sides seemed 
to have been wrenched asunder by some 
great convulsion of nature ; while the 
noise of the ocean rushing through the 
mighty chasm, though its ^* earth-shak- 
ing roar comes deadened up," falls on the 
ear like subterraneous thunder. Even 
the shrill scream of the numerous flocks 
of sea-fowl, which from its summit ap- 
pear like flies swarming at its base, is 
but faintly caught at intervals, when urg- 
ing their rapid wings, they reach its al 
titude half way, and spent and exhaust- 
ed by the soaring effort, sink on the 
vi^aves beneath. 

If any sounds can be said to be sub- 
lime, those which reached my ear as I 
tremblingly hung over the abyss of Co- 
radun, may surely arrogate the charac- 
ter; for though the sentiment of sublimity 
belongs more properly to the affections 
of the mind than to mere organic sensa- 
tion, yet who has not felt that there is in 
sound '^ some sympathy with souls," and 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 179 

that the one may be '^ not touched but 
rapt^ not wakened but inspired," by the 
influence of the other? Oh! never can 
that effect be obliterated from my recol 
lection, which was produced on my fancy 
and my feelings, by the deep roar of wa- 
ters in the narrow confines of Coradun. 
and by the wildly magnificent scenery a- 
midst whose savage grandeur 1 heard it: 
often will the memory of that moment re- 
turn, when my mind, all its motions sus- 
pended between admiration and horror, 
became the victim of imagination ; and 
overwhelmed by a sense of my fancied 
danger, I rushed precipitately from the 
awful brow of Coradun, with such a feel- 
ing of vague and doubtful pleasure, as the 
consciousness of sudden preservation on 
the very verge of destruction brings with 
it, the lingering emotions of recent ter- 
ror tempering the joy of immediate de- 
livery. It is amidst such scenes as Co- 
radun and Alt-bo present, where 

" No vernal blooms the torpid rock array, 
Bvit meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest,*' 



180 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

that descriptive genius might select her 
grandest images of sublimity. In such 
a scene, the soaring genius of a Shaks- 
peare, a Salvator, or an Ossian, might 
repose his soaring wing, and find his 
wildest visions realized. 

Our return from the shrine of our in 
teresting pilgrimage was marked-by as 
many ^^hair-breadth scapes," and '^mov- 
ing accidents,'^ as crossing the wildest 
heaths and most desolate rocks, amidst 
the sombre gloom of a dark stormy au 
tumnal evening, could bring with it.— 
While the roar of Coradun was still 
murmuring on our ears, we lost our path ; 
but fortunately met a poor peasant re- 
turning to his hut in the neighbouring- 
mountains, and who, instead of answer 
ing our questions, insisted on turning 
back with us, and was indeed our vo 
luntary guide for near two miles, which 
he had of course to traverse over again 
on his way home. 

Before we caught a view of the cliifs. 
the shadows of evening were thickening 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 181 

into night; and notwithstanding the driz- 
zling of the rain, and keen sea-breeze 
that chilled the air, we found the cour- 
teous " sons of the wave" to whom we 
had intrusted our horses, watching with 
solicitude and impatience for our return. 



1 82 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 



SKETCH XVL 



WHATEVER hardships the Irish 
peasant submits to during the week, it 
<-an never be said that " Sunday shines 
no sabbaih-day to Jmn.^^ Apparently en- 
dowed with the singular faculty of being 
periodically happy, the hallowed day 
brings with it to him, a temporary obli- 
vion of every care, and the transient pos- 
session of every enjoyment, which his 
fancy, little schooled in pleasurable spe- 
culation, can devise. Early on a Sun- 
day morning a cabin, cleaner than usual, 
exhibits at its door a groupe very differ- 
ent in appearance from that it sheltered 
the preceding day. The lower Irish, pas- 
sionately fond of dress, and without the 
means of gratifying their dominant pas- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 183 

sion, confine their wishes to the hard- 
earned suit which the mass-house, or 
dance on Sunday, or the fair of their mar- 
ket-town, affords an opportunity of dis- 
playing. Thus the scanty drapery of 
wretchedness is exchanged, not only for 
the garb of comfort, but of ostentation ; 
and it is not unusual to behold even or- 
namental finery on those on Sunday, who 
during the rest of the week were worse 
clothed than the poorest mendicant in 
England. It is remarked by Buffon_, that 
*^ a man's character passes in some de- 
gree into his dress ; and that we are led 
to suppose what kind a man he is, by the 
kind of dress he wears." This is in some 
degree illustrated by the weekly meta- 
morphosis of the Irish peasant ; for he 
seems to throw off, with his wretched 
" customary suit," the gloom of coun- 
tenance which accompanied it, and the 
national cheeriness of his character then 
shines in every lineament of his face. , 

On a Sunday the young women go in 
groupes to the mass -house, generally 



18 i PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

dressed in white gowns and coloured pet- 
ticoats ; with their rug cloaks hanging 
on one arm, and their shoes and stock- 
ings on the other. When they approach 
the chapel they bathe their feet in the 
first stream^, and assume those articles 
of luxury which are never drawn on but 
for shew, and the public gaze of the pa- 
rish. After prayers both sexes, and of 
all ages, generally adjourn to the fields, 
to witness a hurling* match, or some of 



* A barony, and even sometimes a county, 
will hurl against another. The respective par- 
ties are drawn up like two little armies, and dis- 
tinguished from each other by their colours.-*. 
Their goals are generally placed about 200 
yards distant : they are guarded by two senti- 
nels called in Irish coolbara^ while the active 
parties are termed tridah^ which I believe means 
on the alert. " The might that slumbers in a 
peasant's arm'* is by them roused to an incre- 
dible exertion; and the address, spirit, and dex- 
terity, displayed during the game, are truly won- 
derful Wrestling-matches are also extremely 
frequent, and generally performed with singu- 
lar skill and adroitness. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 185 

those manly sports to which the lower 
Irish are so passionately addicted. One 
of them, the cathu-clogh, or " flinging 
of the stone/' is precisely the same with 
the ancient Greek pastime of the discus. 
The candidate who pants for the fame of 
those 

" Virtues that are placed in nerve and bone," 

takes a stone of immense weight in his 
right hand, inclines his body a little for- 
ward, advances one l^g, poises his arm, 
and after two or three balancing moti- 
ons, flings it from him to a considerable 
distance. These national amusements 
are not confined to the peasantry, the 
young gentlemen of the adjoining coun- 
ties frequently engage in them. As in 
the gymnastic festivals of ancient Greece, 
men of the highest rank, and most re- 
fined education, appear as candidates 
for the prize of personal strength or per- 
sonal activity. Thus even the amuse- 
ments among the lower Irish are calcu- 
lated to strengthen their frames, and io 

inure them in supporting the greatest 
q2 



186 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

burthens and the greatest fatigue. While 
the English peasant employs the hour 
succeeding to his attendance at church, 
in the perusal of some religious tract, 
the Irish peasant devotes himself to an 
exercise which may render him a less pi- 
ous, but certainly forms him to be a more 
serviceable member of the community. 

Although the fare of Sunday seldom 
rises beyond the accustomed potatoes 
and milk of the rest of the week ; some 
few halfpence are always spared from 
the household purse to purchase the plea- 
sures which the Sunday cake bestows. — 
In the centre of a field near some petit 
auberge, a distaff is fixed in the earth, 
on which is placed a large flat cake: this 
cake is the signal of pleasure, and be- 
comes the reward of talent. The young 
and old of both sexes, for miles round 
the neighbourhood, hasten to enjoy the 
pleasures of the cake, which is some- 
times carried off by the best dancer, and 
sometimes by the archest wag of the com- 
pany. At a little distance from this stan- 
dard of revelry, is placed its chief agent 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 187 

the piper, who is always seated on the 
ground with a hole dug near him, into 
which the contributions of the assembly 
are dropt : the manner of bestowing 
these donations is attended with a little 
gallantry not to be passed over in silence. 
At the end of every jig, the piper is paid 
by the young man who dances it, and 
who endeavours to enhance the value of 
the gift, by first bestowing it on his fair 
partner, and though a penny a jig is es- 
teemed very good pay, yet the gallantry 
or ostentation of the contributor, anxi- 
ous at once to appear generous in the eyes 
of his mistress, or to outstep the liberal- 
ity of his rivals, sometimes trebles the 
sum which the piper usually receives. I 
have been at some of these cakes, and 
have invariably observed the inordinate 
passion for dancing, so prevalent among 
the Irish peasants. It is indeed very rare 
to find an individual among them who 
was not for some time under the tuition 
of a dancing master.* Thus passes a- 



* It is however necessary to observe that the 
profession of this elegant art, by no means pro- 
hibits the adoption of any other : a friend of 



188 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

way the Sabbath of an Irish peasant, the 
first hours of the day are devoted to re- 
hgion, the rest to the enjoyment of such 
pleasures as lie within the limited scope 
of his acquisition. Sometimes led by the 
light of nature, sometimes restrained by 
the shades of prejudice, alternately go- 
verned by truth and error, his conduct 
is only to be judged by the circumstan- 
ces under which he is reared. The rigid 
principles of Calvinistical faith, the strict 
observances of Lutheran piety, may con- 
demn his festal mode of passing that day 
peculiarly devoted to the Being who made 
it the sacred season of his own repose ; 
but whether the happy overflowings of a 
cheerful humble heart, blest and blessing 
in the short sweet season of its transient 
feUcity, or the sombre meditation of sys- 



mine having sent for a carman a few days back 
to convey some furniture to a neighbouring 
town, he excused himself, saying that " he was 
a dancing-master by trade, as well as a car- 
man, and that his pupils were so numerous just 
then, he could not possibly absent himself from 
them. 



PATRIOTIC SKJiTCHES. 189 

tematic piety, periodically indulged, ac- 
cox'ding to the letter of the law, is the in- 
cense that '^ smells sweetest to heaven,'^ 
it is for him alone to judge ^^ to whom 
all heart>? are known '' 



190 PATRIOTIC SKKTCHES, 



SKETCH XVII, 



TO those who are Epicureans in wea- 
ther, whose pleasures are in some degree 
subject to " every skiey influence," the 
refreshing sweetness of the air after a 
transient shower is the first of atmosphe- 
rical enjoyments ; and in the confidence 
of a promise oiFcred to us by a brilliant 
rainbow, we set out on one of the plea- 
santest rambles we had hitherto enjoyed. 
Directing our steps to the foot of the ox- 
mountains, we crossed a dismantled arch 
rudely thrown over a stream which flow- 
ed from their summit, and whose source 
became the object of our pursuit. As 
we descended the mountain's brow, a lit- 
tle vally gradually opened between its 
steep acclivities, which still ascending 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 191 

with the elevation of the mountains, was 
still embosomed by its irregular and o- 
verhangingprojections,while the streams 
which serpentined through it, seemed- to 
expand as we proceeded along its banks, 
sometimes dashing wildly over those pie- 
ces of rock it had torn away in its steep 
descent, sometimes stealing its thin pel- 
lucid wave over broad flags of marble 
which shone brightly to the transient sun- 
beam, and sometimes falling unimpeded 
from a lofty and perpendicular steep, 
while from the white foam beneath arose 
a feathery spray which dropt in dewy 
showers on the aquatic plants with which 
its shores were enriched. We frequent- 
ly paused in the course of our ramble 
from the weariness of the continued as- 
cent ; but more frequently to contem- 
plate such scenes as included within a 
coup-d'oeil, much of the beautiful and sub 
lime of picturesque creation. The bound- 
less ocean, the Alpine rock, the dreary 
heath, the luxurious vale, and many 
landscape traits incongruous to each o- 
ther, seemed here happily united in one 



192 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

harmonious combination ; while many a 
ruin which time had ^' mouldered into 
beauty," many a hut which necessity had 
hung upon the virid point of some tall 
clift', charmed the fairy gaze of fancy, 
and awakened in the musing mind a 
train of associated ideas which shed an 
extraneous interest over every object on 
which the eye reposed. While 1 beheld 
these beautiful scenes, so numerous in 
my native country, so frequently con- 
cealed in those remote places which na- 
tional observation has never visited, and 
to which foreign curiosity has never been 
pointed ; imagination eagerly glided o- 
ver those times of anarchy and warfare, 
when the waste and desolated land smok- 
ed with the vital stream of her sons, to 
that felicitous period, when the candid 
Bede describes it as another Canaan, 
flowing with milk and honey ; and when 
even Cambreus, borne away by the beau- 
ty and fertility of its aspect, describes it 
as a country whose verdant hills were 
covered with innumerable flocks, whose 
plains waved with golden corn, and 
whose ancient forests were filled with 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 193 

wild beasts. Such it was when the Cam- 
brian topographer landed on its green 
and smiling shores among the first of its 
British invaders*. 

Notwithstanding the rough acclivities 
of which these mountains are composed, 
we found them cultivated to their sum- 
raits, in detached places ; and as we were 
climbing up an almost inaccessible steep, 
we overtook a poor peasant who was li- 
terally not driving but pushing a poor 
lean horse up before him, laden with pan- 
niers filled with manure, with which he 
was going to enrich a future potatoe 



* Even Morryson, the most prejudiced and 
abject of the many scribblers, who in the Eli- 
zabethian day, endeavoured to write themseh'es 
into the favour of the English government by 
calumniating the natural as well as the moral 
state of Ireland, even while he upbraids the na- 
tives for their negligence of agriculture, is in- 
advertently led into a description of the beau- 
ty and fertility of a part of the country and 
involuntarily extols the disposition of the Irish 
to tillage and their large exportation of corn. 

R 



194 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

ridge, obtained for a low rent on the sum- 
mit of the mountain ; thus, by unexam- 
pled industry and unwaried labour, en- 
deavouring to 

" Force a churlish soil for scanty bread." 

Before we lost sight of him, he had ac- 
tually taken one of the panniers off the 
w^retched animal's back, and was carry- 
ing it on his own.* 



* A cultivation so constantly formed on the 
summits of the highest mountains in Ireland, 
proves that native taste for agriculture, which 
to the modern Irish has been so unjustly de- 
nied, and of which the ancient left such irre- 
fragable proofs. Mr. Mollineux in his letter to 
the archbishop of Dublin, supposes Ireland to 
have been more populous in former times, 
merely from the remains which it still exhibits 
of agriculture : " momitains, says, he, that are 
now covered with bogs, have been formerly 
ploughed, for when dug five or six feet high a 
proper soil for vegetation is discovered, and an 
appearance of furrows and ridges is still visible : 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 195 

"^While necessitous industry, without 
the cheering stimulus of a competent 
reward, thus toils laboriously up the 
'^ heights precipitous/' and steals a scan- 



he adds, that a plough and a hedge-rov/ were 
found under a bog six feet deep in the county 
of Donegal, and that he had himself seen the 
stump of a large tree in a bog ten feet deep at 
Castie Forbes. It is well known that in the 
■\vdldest and most uncultivated parts of the 
county of Cork, the vestages of high roads cut- 
through the mountains are still visible, and that 
while modern Ireland is reproached for the 
scantiness of her plantations, her luxurious 
woods in former times supplied England with 
the timber of which many of the noblest of her 
religious edifices are constructed : the churches 
of Gloucester, Westminster, and several others, 
are covered luith Irish oak. All that remained 
of the Irish woods were cut down during the 
reigns of William and Anne, and sent to Hol- 
land for the purpose of ship-building, Irish oak 
being even then deemed the best in Europe. 
I believe it was some time antecendent to that 
period, that the famous wood of shilelah in tlie 
county of Wicklow lost its growth of timber. 
" Countries," says Montesquieu, "^are not cul- 



196 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

iy subsistence from that rugged soil least 
favoured by the genial eye of nature, in- 
dolence, as a national defect, cannot be 
attributed to the Irish character.* Per- 
haps indeed the same cheeriness of exer- 
tion is not to be found in the Irish labour- 
er as animates the efforts of the Enghsh 
husbandman. But surely the eagerness 
with which the English farmer seizes on 
the poor peasant emigrant of Ireland, is 



tivated in proportion to their fertility, but to 
their liberty ; and the vesdges of ancient agri- 
culture which are still discoverable in Ireland, 
give no faint proof of the civil liberty she en- 
joyed." 

* I have been repeatedly assured by persons 
of undoubted veracity, that it is usual to let the 
least fertile parts of the mountains to the pea- 
santry, at a low rent ; from whom, after they 
have by the greatest labour improved their soil, 
it is reclaimed, and relet at a higher rent to 
some more wealthy tenant : mean dme the ori- 
ginal cultivator takes another barren tract, and 
continues to use the same exertions to the same 
effect 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 197 

a correlative proof of that superiority of 
manual strength*, that wondrous capa^ 
bility of exertion, and that ready inclina 
tion for employment, which characterize 
the poor adventurer, whose merit in this 
instance is seldom justly estimated in his 
own country, and never adequately re- 
warded. ^' Nature is just to all mankind^ 
and repays them for their industry : she 
renders them industrious by annexing 
rewards in proportion to their labour; 
but if an arbitrary prince should attempt 
to deprive people of nature's bounty, they 
would fall into a disrelish of industry, 
and then indolence and inaction must be 
their only happiness:" and by whatever 
means the bounteous intentions of na- 
ture are counteracted, the efforts must 
be the same. 

The character of a nation, so far as it 
is uninfluenced by climate, must in a 
great degree be the result of the policy 

. * " Both the body and mind of the Irish," 
says Davis, " are indued with extraordinary a- 
bilities of natui'e." 



i98 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

by which it is governed. " La science 
de la morale, says Helvetius, n'est au- 
tre chose que la science meme de legis- 
lation.'' — Admitting, therefore, that the 
indolence of the Irish has become a na- 
tional vice, it certainly cannot be traced 
to a national source ; the liberal minister 
of Elizabeth^ reluctantly acceding to the 
fact, endeavours, and with success, to 
trace it to the extortion of com and live- 
r//, an extortion under which the Irish 
smarted for centuries, ^^ and which," says 
Davis, " produced two notorious effectSy 
for it made the lands waste, and the peo- 
ple idle ; for when the husbandman had 
laboured all the year, the soldier con- 
sumed in one niglit all the fruits of that 
labour." Among a people who for more 
than four centuries suffered the most gal- 
ling hardships that warfare and civil dis- 
sention could inflict, who, as an English 
minister expresses it, " were beaten as 
in a mortar by pestilence and famine," 
many bad habits must have insinuated 
themselves, which thne, good policy, and 
undeniable causes of popular content- 
ment, could alone ujidermine or des- 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 199- 

troy ;* and indeed a knowledge of Irish 
history is sufficient to convince the most 
prejudiced mind, that most of the vices 
which have been attributed to the cha- 
racter of the lower Irish, are to be trac- 
ed to an early political cause. Thus the 
same injustice that operated as a check 
on the ardour of Irish industry, broke 



* " Qu'ont produit, jusqu'aujourdhui les plus 
belles maximes de morales ? Elles ont corrige 
quelques particuliers des defauts que peu-^ttre 
ils se reprochaint d'ailleurs : elles n'ont pro- 
duit aucun changement dans les moeurs des na- 
tions. Quelle en est la cause ? C'est que les 
vices d'un peuple sant, si j'ose le dire, toujours 
caches au fond de sa legislation ; c'est la qu'il 
fut fouiller, pour arracher la racine productrice 
de ses vices." Helvetius. — " What has ever 
been accomplished by all the fine maxims of 
morality ? They may have corrected some faults, 
of which individuals were conscious in their 
conduct ; but they have produced no amend- 
ment in the characters of nations. And the 
cause of this is, that the vices of a people are 
always rooted in its legislative code, where w:^ 
must search in order to eradicate them/' 



200 PATRIOTIC SKETCHESk 

the tie of national love, and drove the 
suffering native of Ireland a mendicant 
into foreign lands*, awakened in those 
w^ho preferred a struggling penury at 
home, to confident indigence abroad, that 
vigilant quickness of apprehension, which 
prejudiced aversion construed into craft. 

As we had now reached the spring of the 
mountain-torrent, whose devious course 
had already seduced us far beyond the 
general limits of our rambles, we began 
to descend by a winding path, which led 
to a little village on the skirts of the 
mountain's brow. The intelligence of our 
approach had preceded our arrival by 
some minutes, and two of the villagers 
who had been in dispute about a stream 
of water, which the one had diverted 



* <* So, says Sir J. Davis, that the lower I- 
rish chose to be beggars in foreign countries 
rather than labour in their o^vn fruitful land at 
home." " And a brave people, asserts Burke, 
" will prefer liberty accompanied by virtuous 
poverty, to a depraved and wealthy servitude." 
Re/lections on the Revolution in France. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 201 

from supplying the mill of the other, came 
to submit their dispute to Mr. ***, and 
to abide by his arbitration. A people 
who are always thus ready to apply to 
magisterial influence, cannot so much be 
supposed a litigious people, as to act from 
a sense of equity that renders them ever 
alive to the least appearance of imposi- 
tion. 

An Irish peasant who thinks himself 
aggrieved or injured, will go any dis- 
tance, and encounter every obstacle, to 
obtain retribution, or, as he expresses it, 
to get law ; but whatever may be the 
destiny of his suit, or whatever verdict 
the magistrate pronounces, even though 
destructive to his hopes, and inimical to 
his interest, if he can at all reconcile it 
to his understanding, he submits without 
a murmur.* 



* Being on a visit a few Aveeks back at the 
house of a leading magistrate, and rising earlier 
one morning than usual, I beheld from my 
window two groupes of peasants leaning at a 
little distance from each other j and though it 



202 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

Fierce in their native hardihood of soul, 
True to imagined ri^ht, above controul, 
While thus the peasant boasts his right to scan. 
He learns to venerate himself as man. 

The Irish have probably borrowed this 
keen sense of justice and profound sub- 
mission to judicial authority, from the ri- 
gid severity of their ancient Brehon laws. 
"When Sir E. Pelham and Sir J. Davis 
went as the first justices of assize into 
the counties of Tyrconnel and Tyrone, 
they observed, that though their corn- 



was excessively cold and rained heavily, they 
remained in this exposed and comfortless situa- 
tion from seven till ten. When my host de- 
scended from his bed-room and gave audience 
to his shivering clients, who had come for law, 
the question to be decided was of a very equi- 
vocal nature, and I imagine it required all the 
subtility of the law to ascertain to an exactitude 
which was the party aggrieved ; an immediate 
judgment was however pronounced, and the li- 
tigants departed amicably together, equally sub- 
missive to the decree of magisterial umpire, 
though certainly not with equal cause for satis- 
faction. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 203 

mission was somewhat distasteful to the 
Irish lords, ** yet tiiat it w as most sweet 
and welcome to the common people : for 
they quickly apprehended the difference 
between the tyranny and oppression un- 
der which they lived before, and the first 
government and protection which was 
promised them in time to come :" and 
surely this amenability to magisterial in- 
fluence, this subordination to the voice 
of superior rank and official power, ar^ 
gue little of that lawless and intractable 
disposition so generally ascribed to the 
character of the Irish peasantry. 

They indeed not only entertain a strong 
and almost intuitive idea of jurisprudence, 
but are warmly attached to the formulae 
of such little laws as their sense of right 
and wrong, and wish of mutual preser- 
vation, have induced them to establish 
among themselves.* 



* To borrow salt and not to repay it, even to 
the last grain, is deemed a fatal infringement 
of this social code ; and I understadd that even 
the first organization of the Thrashers was 



204 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

marked by the promulgation of certain sump- 
tuary laws, by which they endeavoured to re- 
strain the licentious innovations admitted into 
the costume of their compatriots, by the influ- 
ence of rustic vanity, or the contagion of su- 
perior example. One of their manifestoes fix- 
ed on the door of a chapel, interdicted the use 
of shoes in favour of brogues^ except to such 
as did not speak Irish, they being considered 
equally unworthy the national character and na- 
tional dress. The Irish kerchiff and binogiie 
were also to be worn, on the penalty of having 
any more modern covering taken from the we^r 
-Cr. 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 205 



SKETCH XVIII. 



MY rambles and frequent conversa- 
tions with the peasantry in the neigh- 
bourhood of L*** house have obtained 
me a degree of rustic notoriety, to which 
I stand indebted for a visit from Mr. 
Thady O'Conolan, a schoolmaster in the 
neighbourhood, and a personage not on 
\y highly esteemed by his rural disciples, 
but looked up to by his less intelligent 
neighbours, as a prodigy of learning, e 
rudition, and genius. He introduce 
himself, by saying : '^ he had heard 1 was 
fond of Irish composition, and that he 
had waited on me to mention he had some 
of the poems of Ossian, which were much 
at my service. The Irish,^^ he added 
with a brogue that beggars all concepti- 



:^06 PATRIOTIC SKKTCHES. 

on, '' the Irish is the finest and loftiest 
tongue in the world: the English can ne- 
ver come near it, and the Greek alone is 
worthy of being compared to it." He 
then with great enthusiasm repeated the 
description of Fion's shield in Irish, and 
Homer's description of that of Achilles, 
giving, with great exultation, the prefer- 
ence to the former ; as he did to Ossian's 
account of his father's hounds, over the 
dogs of Ovid : and then with the utmost 
gravity declared his intention of trans- 
lating the Eneid, and some of Terence's 
plays, into Irish. " The latter, he con- 
tinued, I will teach to my scholars, who 
may play it yet upon one of the great 
London stages to admiration." 

When I complimented him on the ex- 
tent of his erudition, and expressed my 
astonishment at his having acquired it in 
so remote a situation, he repUed: '^ Young 
lady, I went far and near for it, as many 
a poor scholar did before me : for I could 
construe Homer before I ever put on shoe 
or stocking, aye, or a hat either, which 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 207 

to be sure I never did till I was twenty 
years of age." He then at my request 
gave me a sketch of his peripatetic stu- 
dies. When he was a young man, he 
said, there were but few schools in Con- 
naught, and those few but bad : and that 
it was not unusual for eight or ten boys 
" who had the love of learning strong up 
on them,^'' to set off bare-footed and bare- 
headed to Munster, where the best schools 
were then held ; that they commenced 
their philosophic pilgrimage poor and 
friendless ; but that they begged their 
way, and that the name of poor scholar 
procured them every where friends and 
subsistence ; that having heard much of 
the celebrity of a school-master in the 
county of Clare, he and his adventurous 
companions directed their steps towards 
his seminary; -^ but,'^ added Thady ^' it 
being a grazing country, and of course 
no hospitality to be found there, mean- 
ing that it was thinly inhabited, we could 
not get a spot to shelter our heads in the 
neighbourhood of the school ; so being a 
tight set of Connaught boys, able and 
strong, we carried off the school-master 



208 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

one fine night, and never stopped till we 
landed him on the other side of the Shan- 
non, when a priest gave us a chapel-house, 
and so we got learning and hospitality to 
boot, and the school-master made a great 
fortune in time, all Connaught flocking 
to him, and now here I am at the head of 
a fme seminary myself He then in- 
formed me that he had Mty pupils; that 
the head class were in Homer, and did 
not pay for their tuition, as they assisted 
him to teach the rest ; that all boys of the 
name ot'O'Conolan were also taught gFa- 
tis, and the rest paid according to the 
means of their parents, from one shil- 
ling to four a quarter : he added that he 
had then five female eleves, ^' to whom, 
said he, I am teaching philosophy, the hu- 
manities and mathematics, to give them 
a genteel idea of becoming tutoresses in 
gentlemen's families." After some fur- 
ther conversation, Mr. Thady O'Cono- 
Ian departed, but not without a promise 
of our visiting his academy the following 
day. 



I^ATRIOTiC SKKTCHES, x^()9 

The lyceum of this Coniiaught sage, 
IS a miserable cabin on the side of a ve- 
ry desolate wood. The sound of our 
horses' feet brought a number of his 
young disciples to the door, clad in a dra- 
pery light and frugal as philosophy her- 
self could dictate ; for neither the Greek 
sandal, the Roman perones, nor the I- 
rish brogue, secured their naked feet 
from the damp earthen floor of the aca 
demy. The next moment Thady him- 
self appeared in all the majesty of pe- 
dagogue power : his hair, dress, and 
manner, were all admirable, and left the 
Lingo and O'Sullivan of O'Keefe far be- 
hind; his low clumsy figure, clerical ton- 
sure, rubicund face ; his wrapping coat, 
according to the old Irish costume, fas 
tened with a skewer, the sleeves unoc 
cupied, and the collar of his shirt thrown 
open; combined with his Greek and La- 
tin quotations, his rich brogue, and af- 
fected dignity, to render him a finished 
character. Having reprimanded his pu 
pils for their want of good manners, he 
welcomed us with a look and air that 
s2 



210 PATRIOTIC sketches:' 

seemed to convince us, as well as them, 
that their dereliction from decorum pro- 
ceeded not from any deficiency of pre- 
cept or example on the part of their mas- 
ter. He then apologized for the absence 
of his first class, who, he said, he intend- 
ed should have construed some of Ho- 
mer for us ; but that they had gone to 
cut turf for a poor distressed family in 
the neighbourhood, and that for that day 
the Trojan plains were resigned for the 
bog. *^ It was but the other day, said 
he, they built up that cabin yonder, for 
a poor old widow, and I gave them a 
holiday for it and my blessing into the 
bargain." 

The interior of Thady's cabin perfect- 
ly corresponded with its external aspect. 
It was divided into two apartments, 
which boasted no other furniture than an 
old deal table covered with copy-books 
and slates, and a few boards placed on 
stone« which served as seats to the young 
students, some of whom were poring o- 
ver the ^* Seven wise Masters of Greece:'^ 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 211 

Others, vainly held a Cordery, while their 
eyes were fixed on the visitors ; and 
three tall fellows were endeavoas ing to 
read all at the same time out of an old 
tattered volume of Virgil. '^ There, said 
Thady pointing to the inward room, there 
is my sanctum sanctorum : there I teach 
Homer, philosophy and the mathema- 
tics :" and taking down an old book, 
which had sympathized in the destiny of 
Virgil, he exclaimed : '' This is the only 
Homer I have ; and though seven boys 
read out of it daily, it never causes a 
moment's dispute: whereas,if I hadtwo 
young gentlemen studying in it, my Ho> 
mer would be a bone of contention to 
them from morning till night." Indeed 
Thady endeavoured continually to im- 
press us with an idea of the subordina- 
tion and civilized manners of his scho- 
lars, and we saw nothing that in the least 
degree contradicted his assertions ; he 
assured us that the labourer who earned 
but sixpence a day, would sooner live 
upon potatoes and salt, than refuse a lit- 
tle learning to his child. ^' I have," said 



212 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

he^ " above twenty boys who are come 
from distant parts to me^ who begged 
their way, and are now maintained a- 
mong the poor of the neighbourhood, 
who, far from considering them a bm'- 
then, were so eager to have them, that 
to avoid jealousy, I was obhged to have 
lots drawn forthem; the boys indeed are 
grateful, and make the best returns they 
can by working early and late for their 
patrons when not engaged with me." — 
Having procured a holiday for his pupils, 
we now took leave of Thady ; and if to 
be a school-master, it is ^^ requisite to be 
more or less than man,'^ as Le Sage de- 
clares, Thady certainly conceived him- 
self the former, as he detailed the me- 
rits of his seminary, and the classic pro- 
gress of his disciples. 

The passionate love of letters disco- 
vered by the native Irish in all ages, it 
would indeed be obstinate scepticism to 
deny ; since even the host of enemies 
which Ireland has had to contend with, 
never dare deny her supremacy in learn- 
ing ; and how so ardent a love for all 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 21 S 

that softens and humanizes the natural 
state of man can be reconciled with a fe- 
rocious and savage barbarity of national 
character, is a paradox not easily com 
prehended. Sir John Davis, who was 
attorney general in Ireland, when a se- 
ries of civil wars had reduced it to an al- 
most barbarous state, compared to that 
in which it was found by the English ba- 
rons in the re'^,^ of Henry the Second, 
declares, '' that the Irish were even then, 
amidst an unceasing anxiety for their 
lives and property, which were always 
threatened and never secure, still lovers 
of music, poetry, and all kind of learn- 
ing ;" and indeed no stronger testimony''^ 
of their ancient civilization could be pro- 



*Allemande, in his Histoire d*Irlande, as- 
serts that it was enough to be an Irishman, or 
even to have studied in Ireland, to become the 
founder of a religious seminary in any part of 
Europe. " When Gothic ignorance expelled 
all learning and science from the continent," 
says an elegant writer, " they fell into the pro- 
tection of the Hynialls until a war with stran- 
gers altered the face of things in Ireland,'* 



214 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

duced than that which still exists in the 
love of learning discoverable among the 
most neglected and despisedof their pos- 
terity. Doctor Johnson, in lamenting 
that doctor Leland began his History 
from too late a date, adds : ** the ages 
w^hich deserve a strict inquiry, are those 
times, for such there have been, when 
Ireland was the school of the West." 
Learning in Ireland has in/<.ed had much 
to encounter both from foreign and do- 
mestic enemies. The first blow it re- 
ceived was during the first Danish inva- 
sion, when the savage Turgicus with a 
political barbarity burnt all the books he 
could discover, and razed the colleges 
to the ground ; while the bard, resign- 
ing his charming art with that liberty 
which had been his inspiration and his 
theme, fled from the usurped castle of 
his patron, or escaped from the ruins of 
the hallowed sanctuary of his order, and 
with his harp unstrung and his voice bro- 
ken and tremulous, sought a refuge in the 
labyrinth of the cavern or the gloom of 
the wood, refusing like the en: laved Is- 
raelite to breathe on the ear of his coun 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 215 

try's foe a " melody in heaviness.'' Yet 
how few are there now to be found, who, 
like the bard of Erin or of Israel, ex- 
claim : " when I forget thee, my coun- 
try, may my right hand forget her cun- 
ning !" 

On our return from Thady's, a tall 
well-looking young man with a satchel 
on his back, ran for a considerable way 
beside the carriage, until perceiving that 
we observed him, he said he had taken 
the liberty to follow us, to beg we would 
give him an old Cicero ; as we had dis- 
tributed several old books among Tha- 
dy's pupils, not one of which had fallen 
to his lot. W^e asked him what profes- 
sion he was intended for: he said he had 
been studying for Apothecaries' Hall, 
but that of late he had taken to Philoso- 
phy. The philosopher was barefooted, 
and though it was raining, ran beside 
the carriage with an uncovered head. 



216 PATKIOTIC SKJETCHES. 



SKETCH XIX. 



THE incessant rain of a morning, sul 
try for the advanced season, was the pre- 
curser of one of tlie finest evenings I 
ever beheld. The clouds discharged of 
their heaviness rose in fleecy columns 
from the sides of the surrounding moun- 
tains. The setting sun unobscured by a 
single vapour, with all his blushing ho- 
nours thick about him, sunk in the waves 
of the ^' steep Atlantic;" and the large 
lingering drops of the recent showers 
hung like brilliant gems on the foliage 
of the trees, whose leaves were imbued 
with the mellow colouring of autumn's 
last tints. The air, calm and still, breath- 
ed odours ; and a shot fired from an A- 
merican vessel as it cleared the bar, was 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES- 217 

the only sound that disturbed the soft so- 
lemnity of the hour. Such was the even 
ing in which my last ramble amidst the 
romantic wilds of Tyreragh was taken 

I had not wandered far from L*** 
house, when I was overtaken by a young 
peasant who was driving a mule laden 
with two panniers. As soon as he had 
approached us, I received the usual be 
nediction and salute ; and the volun 
tary information that he was going to 
Sligo, for some grains for a sick cow, 
not being able, he said, to procure any 
at Ballina, whence had just come, as 
Ballina and its neighbourhood had been 
the he ad -quarters of the Thrashers. I 
made some inquiries relative to their o 
perations. '' Why, replied he, they arc 
busy enough at present with the tythe 
proctors ; and they have barred a priest 
out of his chapel, in the hope of making 
him lower his dues, threatening to go to 
church if he does not, not being able to 
pay both priest and minister, since the 
proctors have raised the tythe s and the 



218 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

priest his dues. For my own part^ 
church or mass is all the same to me." — 
After some further conversation, my e- 
leemosynary companion passed on. 

The apparent indifference of this 
young peasant, who was probably the 
oracle of his countrymen, to any peculi 
ar form of worship, confirmed me in an 
opinion, which from reiterated experi- 
ence T had long entertained ; that the pea- 
santry of Ireland were not naturally so 
bigoted a people as was generally sup- 
posed ; and that they were rather coa- 
lesced in opinion and sentiment, and at- 
tached to a certain class in political es- 
tablishment, than jealously united as the 
professors of any particular sect in reli 
gion. 

Does the unfortunate whom necessity 
leads, or the traveller whom mischan^ 
conducts, to their huts, find his religion 
a subject of inquiry before he receives 
the rites of hospitality, so cordially, so 
indiscriminately bestowed? Does the 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 219 

protestant gentleman find himself less 
faithfully, less actively served than the 
catholic, or does a difference of faith in- 
fluence the social affections of their hearts, 
or chill the ardour of their attachment to 
those who treat them with justice andhix 
manity ? Oh ! no ; the line of demarca 
tion which severs the lower from the high 
er orders of the Irish nation has not been 
traced by the finger of bigotry : it is 
drawrn by poverty and discontent ; it is 
to be defaced by benevolence and good 
policy. 

However principles of patriotism may 
be influenced by a romantic ardour of i- 
magination ; however the amor patriae. 
of youthful feelings may revel in the spe 
culation of a native Utopia; however 
the enthusiasm of national affection may 
ideally overleap the rational boundary of 
reason and possibility; it is not easy to 
believe that even the most visionary mindf 
animated by the most patriotic senti 
ments, would be so chimerical in its hopes 
or so wild in it? desires, a? to anticipate 



;<^20 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 

or suppose the revival of those original 
rights forfeited by the influence of the 
(now far distant) events to which all na- 
tions are subject, and lost in the sweep 
of ages gone by '^ with those beyond the 
Flood ;" or speculate on the annihilation 
of those existing establishments, sancti- 
oned by time, by succession, by all that 
guards the privileges and claims of so- 
ciety, and all that secures the property 
and possessions of the individual. But 
though I would not assert, and do not be- 
lieve, that "the succession of those who 
cultivate the soil is the true pedigree 
of property ;" yet while in those who do 
cultivate it I behold the rude traces of 
the happiest nature, struggling against 
the hardships of the severest destiny ; 
while local oppression and hopeless indi- 
gence impel them to desperate revolt, or 
lure them to daring innovation; itis sure- 
ly to be wished that those causes, which 
through a series of ages have produced 
such fatal, such invariable effects, were 
at least softened, if not effectually eradi- 
cated,* 



PATRIOTIC SKETCHES, 221 

It is indeed asserted by some Irishmen, 
that there is no excuse for the errors of 
their unhappy countrymen, because there 
is no cause for that murmuring spirit of 
discontent so long apparent in their con- 
duct ; and though this doctrine of effect 
without causes may be supported by some 
logicians, who assert that their actual se- 
paration implies neither absurdity nor 
contradiction, yet to one whose heart has 
long sorrowed over national affliction, 



* " If civil society be made for the advantage 
of man, all the advantages for which it is made 
become his right : it is an institution of bene- 
ficence ; and law itself is but beneficence act- 
ing by rule. Men have a right to live by that 
rule : they have a right to justice as between 
their fellows, whether their fellows are in po- 
litic functions, or in ordinary occupation ; they 
have a right to the fruits of their industry, and 
to the means of making their industry fruitful ; 
they have a riejht to the acquisition of their pa- 
rents, to the nourishment and improvement of 
their offspring, to instruction in life, and to con- 
solation in death.'* — Burke's Reflections on the 
Revolution in France. 



222 PATRIOTIC SKETCHES. 

and whose head is little skilled in logical 
subtilities, it implies both. 

The light of truth guides us by the sim- 
plest path to the source of national mise 
ry or national vice ; it is with her we 
trace them to natural or to moral causes, 
to the fatality of chmate or to the errors 
of legislation. It is by her pure beam 
we discover whether the distractions in 
which nations are so frequently involved, 
are the physical results of feverish con- 
stitutions and maniac brains ; or the mo- 
ral effects of that impulsive principle in 
human nature, which sooner or later in- 
evitably opposes itself to the infringe- 
ments of those rights which hold their 
sacred charter from the voice of nature^ 
God 



THE END. 



ADVERTISEMENT. 



THE publishers of Miss Owenson's 
Patriotic Sketches would remark, that 
the price of the English copy of this work 
is four dollars. They flatter themselves, 
it will be a source of pleasure to local 
readers to learn, that the type was cast 
expressly for this volume at the Balti- 
more Foundery, owned by Samuel Sow- 
er Sf Co. — the paper manufactured by 
Conrad, Lucas §• Co. — and the relative 
excellence of each has not often been 
surpassed by any publications whichhave 
been issued from the American press. 

Miss Owenson has been long celebra 
ted, as an eminent proof of the vast ex- 
tent of the powers of the imagination ; 
and her ardent attachment to the '^ Eme- 
rald Isle," elicits patriotic fire in every 
page of her writings, when the ^^ green 
fields of Erin" are the subject. They 



ADVERTISEMENT. 

who have read and admired the Wild 1- 
rish Girl, will recognise in the Patriotic 
Sketches the same pen, animated by a si- 
milar spirit; and this last effusion of her 
mind will be perused with the strongest 
emotions of sympathy and philanthropy, 
by all those who weep over the degrada- 
tion, or rejoice in the melioration of the 
condition of man. 

Baltimore, June 2d, 1809. 



a 63 5 



